Jun 27

Jun 27 Same As It Ever Was

About the book

Author: Claire Lombardo
Publisher: Doubleday

More info:
The StoryGraph | Goodreads
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the review.

Buy and support indie bookstores (+ I earn a small commission):
Bookshop.org (print) | Libro.fm (audio)

My Review

Claire Lombardo’s The Most Fun We Ever Had is one of my favorite books of all time, so when I heard she had another 500-page family drama coming out, reader, I squealed.

This story is about a middle-aged woman named Julia. She’s married with two kids, one of whom is unexpectedly getting married after his girlfriend got pregnant, and the other of whom is about to graduate high school. We flash back and forth between past and present, first to a damning inflection point in her marriage and then even further back, to the childhood that led her to become estranged from her mother and mistrust her own capacity for all kinds of relationships.

The Most Fun We Ever Had was more of my KIND of story because it broke your heart via beautifully loving relationships and family dynamics, whereas this book was about much messier relationships and the lingering impact of trauma and betrayal. Julia is also often unlikeable, even though it’s easy to sympathize with her. So those 500 pages felt a biiiit sloggier for me this time around. But still, there’s no denying that Lombardo is an absolute master of character and relationship work on the page. She’s not afraid to give us a chunky book that dives deep into those interpersonal dynamics and really excavate their complicated layers. Her ability to create characters so vivid that they break your heart is top-notch — and at the end of the day, that’s the mark of a great literary fiction novel for me.