"The Nest" by Cynthia D'Aprix-Sweeney

If you have ever thought of your family as dysfunctional, then you need to meet the Plumbs. Just a quick glance will make you feel much better about the people you call your relatives.

On a cold afternoon in New York City, siblings Melody, Beatrice, and Jack have gathered together to confront their older brother. Leo has just left rehab after driving drunk and crashing his car with a nineteen-year-old waitress who is not his wife in the passenger seat. In order to minimize the fallout, their mother has used most of the money from “The Nest,” a joint trust fund the siblings were only months away from receiving. 

The Nest was left to them by their deceased father to be a mid-life supplement but over the years all of the siblings have been counting on it to solve a number of their self-inflicted money problems. Melody, whose twin daughters are about to enter college, has a mortgage she never could afford. Jack, an antiques dealer, has been funding his shop by borrowing against the beach cottage he owns all the while keeping it a secret from his husband. Bea, a once-promising writer, has never finished her novel and has had to pay her advance back to her publisher.

The Plumb siblings need Leo to rescue them soon before everything collapses. But Leo has a few more secrets he is keeping from his siblings. As they deal with the choices from their past and the fallout of the accident, they will be drawn together and pulled apart like only siblings can be.

The Nest, by Cynthia D’Aprix-Sweeney is a story about family, relationships, and the ways that we both build each other up and bring each other down.

Since its release this has been a very popular book. Not a shift goes by at the bookstore that I’m not discussing this book with customers. And the conversations always come down to one thing - who doesn’t love a dysfunctional family? They definitely make you feel better about your own family. Let’s face it, there is dysfunction in every family, and I love reading about real families.

I enjoyed this book. The characters aren’t that likeable and that is what is so likeable about them. I honestly didn’t feel that there was a whole lot to the book, it’s more a study of character than a plot driven novel. It was easy to read, I breezed through it and that made the reading experience enjoyable. If the book had been a longer read I don’t think I would have liked it as much. The characters probably would have gotten on my nerves after a while rather than being fascinating. 

The writing in this book is beautiful and strong but the book is definitely lacking in some places. I wonder if it suffers because of the high expectations that have been placed on it due to all of the buzz before it was released.

Do I think that the book is an amazing, must-read, best book of the year? No, but it wasn’t a waste of time either. Overall it was a good reading experience and I’m glad to have read it as it is definitely one of the biggest conversation starters in the book world this year.