jenkepesh 's review for:

Family Family by Laurie Frankel

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Laurie Frankel crafts family novels that are engrossing and vaguely relatable (though her characters are not ever "you," they may be in some ways "aspirational you"). In this novel, which travels between four 1998 and 2020, the private choices of a young woman determined to be an actress are uncovered after she's become a household name. She's fiercely protected her two adopted children from media intrusion, but when a young journalist sees an opportunity to make her bones by bringing up those earlier, complicated choices, her children decide to take matters into their own hands, connecting with family members by blood and by adoption, and bringing the strands of their famous mother's life together in unexpected ways. The tension is mostly about whether these secrets will all be told to the whole world, and what their mother will do--allow them to come out? Bargain to keep them hidden? The choice is not completely hers, as studio executives have their own take on what Should Happen and what she must do to make it happen. It's a decent lazy weekend read.