The Reunion

Opening a school reunion invitation brings feelings of uncertainty for sisters, Caroline and Eleanor Plunkett. Do they want to return to their past? Caroline is now a successful designer, splitting her time between the UK and Italy. Eleanor is stuck in a rut, overweight and struggling to connect with her husband and son. Both women may have been born to the same parents, but their lives began to split while they were still in their teens. Can facing up to the past help them improve their present, or is going back the wrong thing to do?

It's funny how two siblings can end up in completely different situations. Caroline was the studious one, destined for a career in academia, whilst younger sister Eleanor was the more fun-loving of the two; more interested in her boyfriend and having a laugh with her mates. However, one fateful evening changes their paths in life. Caroline soon finds herself pushed away from the family home and Eleanor's boyfriend dashes all hopes for her own future. In the midst of all this change is the girls mother, who is more concerned with the goings-on of her neighbours than of her own two daughters. Secrets are kept, lies are told and damage is done.

Roisin Meaney has a way of telling a story that makes you feel like you are in a room with the characters, hearing them chat to each other, rather than reading words on a page. From very early on in the novel, there is a feeling of genuine concern as to how these two girls will handle their own stories. Caroline is the victim of the most despicable crime, yet is treated as if she is to blame. Her mother takes control of the situation and God help anyone who tries to object. A distance cousin, Florence, steps up to the plate and becomes Caroline's saviour. A wonderfully warm and quirky character, she has a delightful presence throughout the novel. Back in Ireland, Eleanor is weighed down with personal grief and is scared to face up to her past. Her story is addressed further into the book, with memories unfolding which help to explain her distance.

The Reunion is a book about families and how they can sometimes be fractured and displaced. The keeping of secrets, the hiding of home-truths and the attempt at showing a united front are not always the right approach to take. Most families have drama within their folds. Sometimes admitting your flaws is the only way to gain solidarity. By using two sisters, both with hidden traumas, the author has created a novel which is both endearing and astute. The dual time frame is very cleverly used and every single character adds something to the overall narrative. Florence is fantastic and her group of older-generation friends are a breath of fresh air. Her bijoux cottage sounds like a place that we would all love to visit, with its mis-matched decor and charity shop finds. Added to the narrative are Caroline's trips to Italy, with its stunning surroundings, warm family get-togethers and an air of change.

It's easy to see why Roisin Meaney is one of Ireland's best-loved authors. She has a way of bringing her characters to life, making them part of your world as you move from chapter to chapter. Should you spot this on a bookshelf, grab a copy. This is what female fiction is all about.

When Irish sisters Eleanor and Caroline receive an invitation to a school reunion after 20 years they both throw away the invitations but for very different reasons. In alternating chapters by the sisters we learn of the events of 1993 and the consequences on their current life.

Eleanor was the pretty gregarious one full of fun and laughter and her life was perfect with her lovely husband, a great restaurant business and two young children - then tragedy struck and her daughter Beth was drowned in a swimming pool accident at 10 months old and Eleanor was never able to get over it

Caroline was the studious one excelling at her schoolwork and all set to go to university to read history when after babysitting for friends the father gave her a lift home and raped her. Her mother was very unsympathetic and packed her off to a distant cousin Florence in England to have an abortion but Caroline was unable to go through with it and stayed with Florence to have the baby

The book is very little about the actual reunion but how the two girls manage to turn the lives around and come to terms with their past before deciding to go to the reunion - as usual with Roisin Meaney a great book with brilliant characters and a real page turner

Caroline and Eleanor Plunkett are sisters as different as can be. As they become women, both have face challenges that impact their families and their futures. I loved the sisters' personalities, and their strength in moving forward. Highly recommend.

Once again Roisin Meaney hits it out of the park. I could not put this book down and finished it all in one sitting. The author has a knack for writing lovable and relatable characters. Would love to read more about both Caroline and Eleanor's adventures.

Irish sisters Caroline and Eleanor Plunkett both receive an invitation from their old high school for a 20-year reunion of their last class in school. Caroline, still unmarried, is living with her cousin in England, whilst Eleanor lives with her husband and son in Ireland, not too far from her parents. Although Caroline is the older by a year, they graduated together, but for various reasons they both discard their invitations and decide not to attend the class reunion. They certainly don’t want to celebrate their glorious pasts and want only to forget their heady school years. However, the invitation starts them thinking about what has happened in the intervening years, and this is the story told in ‘The Reunion’.

Caroline, always the studious, clever sister, did not go on to study history, as had been her ambition. She moved to Wales and left with quite different qualifications. She went to live with her older cousin who had once been so very kind to her, while she carefully built her career and eventually struck out alone in her own business. She was a talented knitwear designer with a popular label of her own, who travelled widely, sourcing the materials of her trade.

Eleanor, the prettier and most gregarious of the two sisters when they were girls, had totally changed in other ways. Sorrow had destroyed her life when her baby daughter drowned in a swimming pool accident while they were away on a family holiday. She had never recovered, absent from her family in her fug of grief, now a shadow of her vibrant self. Her family were all but forgotten. She had let herself go, piled on the weight and was thoroughly miserable.

Then a letter arrives at Caroline’s home. It is responding to a letter she had written herself many years earlier. Her life opens up and as she reveals secrets to Eleanor, once again the sisters become close. They decide to attend the reunion together after all and arrange to meet at the hotel. By the time they have caught up with their news they have wiled away the evening and when they arrive at the reunion the last of their classmates have already left for home. The floodgates have opened at last and now the two sisters have huge decisions to make about the rest of their lives.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Hachette Books, Ireland for their copy of ‘The Reunion’, sent out to me in return for an honest review. I enjoyed this novel about family, secrets and having the courage to move on. The storytelling was excellent, the characters well crafted and the story was interesting. It is well worth reading.

I absolutely loved this book. It was beautifully written, and even though I had picked it up just to have a peek inside, I found myself putting it down when I was already 60% in and of course I then had to carry on reading, clearly! :)

The story of Eleanor and Caroline is a complicated one. Both sisters have dealt with severe trauma in different ways and it shaped their lives forever. I love how the author describes both of them, their families and other secondary characters, I felt like I knew them. I was there for every horrible thing and every joyful thing as well, and that takes a lot of skill as an author. I would love to continue reading about these two ladies and their lives and that, to me, is the mark of a good book.

This is a highly recommended read for me.

With thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC copy of this book, in exchange for my honest review.

I loved this book. I thought it may be a bit fluffy but it was not at all. A really great story running consecutively over many years about two sisters leading very different lives. Really gripping with lots of emotion. I will be going to get some more books from Roisin Meaney as loved her writing. Thanks to NetGalley and Hatchette Books for the Advanced copy.

Lovely story of love, loss, anguish, and kindness. Truly the story of two sisters and their disparate lives of loss and then found loves and happiness.

This was just a fabulous book to get lost in! I loved all of the characters and found myself rooting for both sisters and hoping each would have a happy ending. The writing was excellent and I highly recommend this wonderful book!

The book is written from the viewpoints of 2 sisters, Eleanor & Caroline, in alternating chapters. Their invitations to a 20th Year High School reunion starts the journey of remembering back over the intervening years since high school.
Both sisters have had tragedies in their lives, and their recollections show how events and the people in your life can shape things. There is plenty of family dysfunction, and the beauty of finding those in your life who end up being the ones you really need.
The author has a nice writing style, and developed the characters well. There were some I really liked, some I despised, and times when I could relate to their feelings, and times I wanted to just slap them. So I guess I found it pretty engaging!

DELIGHTFUL A VERY GOOD READ

I loved this book, but the title is quite misleading, as it leads you to believe this book is mainly about a school reunion, but apart from a mention at the beginning and the end it was absolutely nothing to do with a school reunion. But that apart it was a wonderful book about the lives of two sisters, alternating mainly between the early 1990s and the present day, and I couldn't stop reading to see what happened, a real page turner.

The two main characters are sisters Eleanor and Caroline. Eleanor is the younger sister, married but very distant from her husband and son, who I felt very sorry for. We soon find out the her daughter drowned in a swimming pool accident when she was only a baby and Eleanor has never got over it and her family has suffered because of it. Her son is now 14 and was only just 2 when his sister died and yet Eleanor has seemed to live on another planet since then, hardly interacting with any of her family or knowing what they are doing or what is going on in their lives. As she said to a friend, 'I get up, and I put in the time until I go to bed again'.

Caroline is living with a distant cousin in England and has a great career in design, but we also soon find out that she was raped when being driven home from a babysitting job years before in Ireland. Her Mother decided she was shipping her off to London to stay with this cousin, as she couldn't cope with the scandal (she even questioned whether is was Caroline's fault) even though it was the early nineties, and she was having an abortion - but Caroline put her foot down, with the back-up of the cousin, Florence, who was lovely, and had the baby adopted. Of course her life changed completely after this and she was very estranged from her family, not surprisingly as they didn't support her at all. Her Mum made the decisions and her Dad just went along with what he was told, appalling behaviour for parents. Her Mother didn't change through her whole life, horrible woman who cared more about what people thought than her own daughter - she even stayed friends with the guy who raped her daughter - unbelievable.

This was a book about family really, how sometimes immediate family isn't necessarily your closest family, and how life sometimes just trundles along but sometimes you need a jolt of something happening to make you reassess things, usually as you get older and hopefully a bit wiser.

Thankfully things worked out wonderfully eventually, although I did shed a few tears towards the end, both sad and happy ones! I love the way Roisin Meaney writes and really enjoyed this book. Highly recommended.

School reunions. Does anyone really like them? The Plunkett sisters certainly don’t. They’ve been invited to their twentieth class reunion, but they have no desire to attend. Caroline has come a long way since those days and is a successful clothing designer with a lover in Italy. Eleanor has also changed. No longer the fun loving life of the party, she struggles with an uncommunicative son and a husband who is hiding something from her. The sisters have no plans to attend their reunion, until a letter changes everything. Meaney’s books are always absorbing because she captures human emotions like few writers can. A lovely story

This story drawled me in only because I needed to know the ending, what happened with the characters. This was not my preference of style in writing and there were many cultural differences from the United States that it caused a disconnect for me.

Roisin Meaney is another new author for me as I read The Reunion. The background of the story involves a reunion but at the heart of this book is the relationships of 2 sisters now grown. I found it interesting to see the comparisons of their mother to their way of handling the sorrows that life can ambush you with. It is very much a character study as well as a family study.
I wasn’t sure how Eleanor and Caroline would end up in this novel, the author definitely kept me guessing. I loved the POVs from both sisters. It gave the novel a richer, fuller emotional intensity that was made it so easy to get sucked into their very different lives. Quite well done, so that I was pulling for both instead of just one of them. Excellent.

Sisters Eleanor and Caroline Plunkett have both received an invite to their 20 year school reunion, They both have their own personal reasons for not attending and as the book progresses we learn of the lives they have both ld from their final year in school up to the year of the reunion. Both sisters have suffered sadness and trauma in their lives. How are they coping ? We find this out as E progress through the story.
As with all Roisin Meaneys books I adored this one, Tuis author has a wonderful way of telling a story and her books stay with you for a long time after you finish them. I highly recommend this book and it's a 5 star read from ms.

The book starts with 2 sisters, twins, both getting invitations to their 20 year class reunion. The book then steps back in time, to when the two girls were in their junior year. Caroline has a terrible secret and has to leave their home and go stay with a distant cousin. Eleanor has a very good life until the death of her daughter. The sisters have grown apart but the reunion brings them back together again. This is a very engrossing book, with likable characters and a captivating story line.