the_old_gray_cat 's review for:

The Latecomer by Jean Hanff Korelitz
4.0

This one was a slow burn for me. I could barely make myself pick it up, and when I eventually reached page 124, I debated not finishing it. I didn't care about any of the characters at that point, and I found the book repetitive and annoying. I decided to hang on a bit longer... and somewhere around page 200 I got hooked, and I read the last half of the book in a frenzy.

It's the story of three unhappy IVF babies and their unhappy parents, and the fourth blastocyst, implanted seventeen years later into a surrogate (becoming in the latecomer of the title). It is essentially about the emotional distance and suffering of a family of extravagantly wealthy New Yorkers.

While I think it would have been a much better book if it had been trimmed down by 25%, I did in the end enjoy reading it very much.