Take a photo of a barcode or cover
rwbrock 's review for:
Welcome Home, Caroline Kline
by Courtney Preiss
3.5/5 stars
A novel about reluctantly coming home, feelings of insecurity/inadequacy and embracing life’s changes, I enjoyed this one for the most part.
Caroline Kline, at 29, finds herself at a crossroads. Living in and loving NYC, she suddenly finds herself without a job or home and newly single after a series of life implosions. She is called home to small-town New Jersey when her father suffers a bad fall and is asked by him to take his place on his local and beloved softball league team. She reluctantly agrees (note: there is A LOT of baseball jargon and baseball focus…her father breathes it) and moves in with him and her stepmom. As she begins to sort her life (alcohol-related issues, family dynamics, job insecurity and a long-lost crush), she begins to see that the life she thought she wanted in her dreams may not be the life she actually wants in reality.
While I did like the growth arc of both mains (Caroline and her love interest Crispin, with problems of his own to work through), I actually found myself overall NOT LIKING Caroline much herself. For a 29-year-old, at times she felt oddly immature, and her gruffness and outlandish behavior was irritating/frustrating at times. She seemed to keep repeating mistakes that I thought she had learned from, and her job decision/career switch at the finale just wasn’t what I had expected for her and felt a bit overly rushed into the narrative. On a personal peeve side note, there was a good bit of foul language throughout and some risky behavior that I didn’t need to know about for the story arc as well.
The story did have its nice moments…father/daughter relationship work, sister/sister relationship, stepdaughter/stepmom relationship, sweet and easy-does-it romantic relationship. It was also well-written. But I think for me, it was just an OK and not really a re-read contender for me.
My sincere thanks to NetGalley and G. P. Putnam’s Sons for providing the free early arc of Welcome Home, Caroline Kline for review. The opinions are strictly my own.
A novel about reluctantly coming home, feelings of insecurity/inadequacy and embracing life’s changes, I enjoyed this one for the most part.
Caroline Kline, at 29, finds herself at a crossroads. Living in and loving NYC, she suddenly finds herself without a job or home and newly single after a series of life implosions. She is called home to small-town New Jersey when her father suffers a bad fall and is asked by him to take his place on his local and beloved softball league team. She reluctantly agrees (note: there is A LOT of baseball jargon and baseball focus…her father breathes it) and moves in with him and her stepmom. As she begins to sort her life (alcohol-related issues, family dynamics, job insecurity and a long-lost crush), she begins to see that the life she thought she wanted in her dreams may not be the life she actually wants in reality.
While I did like the growth arc of both mains (Caroline and her love interest Crispin, with problems of his own to work through), I actually found myself overall NOT LIKING Caroline much herself. For a 29-year-old, at times she felt oddly immature, and her gruffness and outlandish behavior was irritating/frustrating at times. She seemed to keep repeating mistakes that I thought she had learned from, and her job decision/career switch at the finale just wasn’t what I had expected for her and felt a bit overly rushed into the narrative. On a personal peeve side note, there was a good bit of foul language throughout and some risky behavior that I didn’t need to know about for the story arc as well.
The story did have its nice moments…father/daughter relationship work, sister/sister relationship, stepdaughter/stepmom relationship, sweet and easy-does-it romantic relationship. It was also well-written. But I think for me, it was just an OK and not really a re-read contender for me.
My sincere thanks to NetGalley and G. P. Putnam’s Sons for providing the free early arc of Welcome Home, Caroline Kline for review. The opinions are strictly my own.