I breezed right through "The Party" racing to the end. It was an enjoyable read, but not outstanding. There are two things I can put my finger on that I did not like. The first is the description of the characters. The author describes the wealthy, tech company executive and his perfect homemaking wife and the yoga and meditation addicted mother of their daughter's friend so clearly I could very easily call up all the stereotypes about these kinds of people and get a good feel for these characters. The stereotype part of that is concerning and I think the descriptions are very "on trend" causing them not to age well. There were too many mentions of current brands, technology, and fads utilized in painting the picture of the kinds of characters in the novel. The second thing I did not love is the ending of the novel. It felt anticlimactic. It tries to give the reader the opportunity to speculate about where the story will go after the book ends without providing enough information to create an interesting or thought-provoking cliffhanger that would leave readers wondering what specific choices the characters will make.

The Party by Robyn Harding is a well developed and gripping novel about the repercussions of teen drinking and bullying. It tells the story about 2 families who are essentially at war against one another after an accident occurred in one of their homes due to their teens drinking and doing drugs at a sweet sixteen party. Now, this isn't one of those stories where you have one set of uber cool parents who let their teens drink and party so that they can be their kids best friends, but rather, a story of kids going against what their parents rules and doing it anyway. When this drinking and drug popping does happen, one is seriously injured and a back and forth game between the two families (both of which appear very vindictive) ensues.

Overall, I found this to be an enlightening story even if it was a little out there for my taste. I guess I just can't imagine how vindictive some people can really be because that's not the type of person I am. With that being said, some of the characters really got on my nerves - mainly the two mothers (one of which the accident occurred in her home and the other the mother of the girl who was hurt)- but even still, I liked them for their parts in the story. The kids in the story are your typical teenagers who go behind their parent's back and break the rules because being popular is more important.

What I liked most of all about this story is the dual point of views used. It goes back and forth between 3 parents (Lisa, whose daughter was injured), Kim (the mother who owns the house where the injury occurred), Jeff - Kim's husband, and the daughter Hanna (who had the sweet sixteen party). This is unique because the sole focus isn't solely on adults but the teens as well which to me, makes it a good adult and YA novel. It's like Mean Girls for both adults and young adults which is pretty cool and unique.

In the end, I really did enjoy the story and read it in only a few hours because I found it to be very gripping. The whole "eye for an eye" thing and "mean girls" come together in this one and I found it to be a very interesting read as a whole. If your a fan of domestic drama (with a little bit of thrill - the ending really got to me-) then this book would be a perfect match for you.

I would like to thank Robyn Harding, Gallery and Netgalley for giving me this book for my honest review.
Review by Stephanie
Hannah is a good student with good friends so her parents were able to trust her. Hannah chooses a non frilly sweet sixteen party, just four of her best friends sleeping over in their multimillion dollar houses. What could go wrong with 16 year old girls, pizza and movies?!?!
Jeff and Kim marriage is filled of tension. It seems like their fun filled life changed overnight from exciting to boring. Kim is always the responsible and “dull one” so when leaving the girls she gave the traditional NO NO NO talk….no boys no drinking and no drugs while Jeff who is still trying to be fun and carefree sneaks the girls a bottle of champagne.

So a sweet sixteen party should be perfect and go without any issues…but WOW that is not the case in this book! I really enjoyed Robyn’s amazing writing and gripping storyline! I am super excited to see what Robyn comes out with next.

Holy Beach Book! If you are looking for an exciting, intoxicating, fun summer read, you need to add The Party by Robyn Harding to your beach bag right away. I started this book on the car ride to our beach destination, and I could not put it down. I finished reading it in the hotel room in the dark beside my sleeping husband and children at our halfway point. In other words, it was so good, I finished the book before we even made it to the beach – in one day.

The Party goes back and forth between the events on the day of a special Sweet Sixteen slumber party and the days after because this party becomes a quintessential before/after event. At this party, hosted by perfect parents (or a mom trying desperately to be seen as perfect), one of the teenagers suffers a life altering injury. How? Because these teens snuck in booze, drugs, and boys – all against the rules.

Therefore, the novel spins off into a story about who is to blame for this tragedy. The hosting parents who vehemently deny any fault or blame? Or the girls themselves? Specifically, the injured party who has a reputation for trouble?

As a mom, I hated all the moms in this book. I hated the perfect acting mother because she was so bent on protecting her own name and reputation rather than on the repercussions for the teenager girl. I hate the injured girl’s mom for focusing so much more energy on her anger than on helping her daughter. I hated the mean girl teenagers who show how finicky popularity in high school is. But, I loved hating them.

While reading, Harding continued to surprise me. I was sickened by the actions of characters – and surprised by them time and time again. In the end, it was the teenager girls who made me the most proud. They stood up against bullying and for what is right. Not the parents.

The novel also was relatable. It is so easy to think you can do everything right parenting wise and still end up dealing with things so beyond what you planned for. It made me question what I would do in a similar situation – because the situation is realistic and not far-fetched. Everything in this novel could happen…you just really really hope it doesn’t.

If you are looking for a fun book to escape into this summer, you must pick up The Party. You won’t regret it.

For the most part, I enjoyed this book. But I found the end to be very disappointing. With this type of book, the ending is everything.

A page-turner for sure. I was surprised I enjoyed thus book as much as I did. A nice summer read!

Sweet Sixteen - NOT. Story shows just how vicious, conniving and despicable popular cliques and bullies can be. And then there are their parents......some behaviors are inherited. Hard to like most everyone in the book, but it is near impossible to stop reading it until the end.

Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to preview the book.

My daughter is 16 and she will no longer be having sleepovers!! i really did enjoy this book - and can especially relate to some of the different characters. A great summer read

While most girls in her affluent San Francisco neighborhood have an elaborate and over-the-top Sweet Sixteen, Hannah is perfectly happy having a quiet night in with a pizza and a few friends. While she’s not exactly gung-ho about the idea of sneaking booze and drugs into the basement, Hannah craves popularity more than anything – and now that Lauren, the single most popular girl in their entire school, has acknowledged her existence (and agreed to come to the party), Hannah is more than willing to bend her parents’ rules a little. …or maybe a lot. The girls have plans for sneaking some boys in (another no-no), including Noah, Hannah’s boyfriend. She knows he won’t be content with just kissing for much longer, but the thought of going further terrifies her (though she’d never admit that, she doesn’t want to look like a prude).

What should have been a fun (okay, and maybe a little boring and childish – would Lauren really consider Hannah to be cool if they spend their entire night watching PG movies?) sleepover quickly takes a turn for the worse as the girls pass around the bottles of alcohol and handfuls of pills they grabbed from their parents’ cabinets. Blood, a basement that’s been turned into a crime scene, a race to the hospital as one girl’s life hangs in the balance.

It’s no secret I love thrillers, but I have to admit they usually come off as feeling a little farfetched with premises I can’t imagine ever experiencing (chasing down serial killers, stumbling across dead bodies, discovering Matt has been living a secret double-life this entire time ha!), but The Party can so easily happen. Four teens have a bit too much to drink (despite the parents forbidding alcohol – and when do teens ever listen?) and a tragedy occurs. It has happened before, it will happen again.

Hannah’s parents were already suffering a rocky relationship (after Jeff accepted a small vial of LSD recently while away at a work conference); the sudden trip to the hospital and ensuing lawsuit throws their lives into a tailspin. Jeff begins working out a little more, staying out a little longer and putting off his return home as long as possible. Kim strikes up a flirtation with a co-worker, eager for some sort of adult connection. Though the girl does survive, she ultimately loses an eye and as her mother sues Jeff and Kim for millions, secrets begin to emerge.

I don’t want to give too much away, but the main reason I tore through The Party so fast (I read it in a single sitting) was because I wanted to see how the lawsuit would play out, if Lisa would win. The rest of the book (high school bullies, the whole Lauren thing, Kim’s potential affair) just didn’t interest me as much. It felt like the book was trying too hard to ramp up the drama but I really didn’t care and only kept reading to see how it would all end.

Though The Party is by no means a bad book (or a badly-written one, for that matter), I couldn’t help but feel let down. I wanted more from this book than I got and expected something a little more thrilling from the amount of buzz it’s been getting. It’s an incredibly fast read, so it certainly has that going for it, but I’ve read much better thrillers. Still, for a lazy afternoon read, you could do far worse.

This was a killer of a story! I absolutely loved it! A sweet sixteen party for Hannah at her home, goes terribly wrong. Even though her parents said there were to be no drugs, no alcohol and no boys, her four friends brought in all three. The next thing we know is that Hannah's parents, Jeff and Kim, are woken up and see Hannah with blood on her hands. One of her friends is injured, are Jeff and Kim culpable, even though they made the rules very clear? Even if not legally culpable, should they be held responsible? Characters choose sides, make judgments and Jeff and Kim do not make the best choices. The ending was a real killer, did not expect that! An edge of your seat thriller, with characters you will dislike and you will want to shout at them to make the right choices!

Thank you for the opportunity to attempt to read and review this book. Unfortunately, I will not be posting a full review of this book on my blog because I was unable to finish it. I did not care for this book - not only were the characters unlikable but there were way too many POVs. I had a hard time connecting with any part of this story and the internal dialogue felt forced.

Robyn Harding
The Party
Available: June 7, 2017
Thank you to NetGalley.com for the opportunity to read an Advanced Reader Copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.
At first I was thinking that Kim was one of the most obnoxious helicopter moms out there. Yeah, I still think that but I understand her as a person more after finishing the story. I had a lot of empathy for Hannah through most of the tale, as I once was a teenage girl just a few years ago but the ending killed that for me. Every kid has that one friendship where parents wish they had never happened. I know mine has had one or two in her life so far but luckily they have ended for one reason or another but I know they are a rite of passage everyone must go through so that they can learn what a real friend is – even if it takes them forever to understand.
What I loved: My favorite part was the realism of the book. I’m not talking about the graphic descriptions of the events, but that the author tackled the concerns and issues and teens and their parents face today that may not have been there when our generation was growing up. Unfortunately, kids are going to sneak alcohol and break the ground rules you would swear on your life that they follow. Luckily, a majority of times nothing happens but the one time something does can have an everlasting ripple effect impacting many lives outside of your immediate loved ones.
What I didn’t love: Jeff is an ass. I’m sure if he just said once “I need to work out because that’s how I am dealing with all of this”, maybe – just maybe, Kim would have understood and may have cut him a little slack. But he didn’t, and comes across as a mega jerk. I’d like to know who their financial advisor was – any idiot can easily realize that only $250,000 in an umbrella insurance policy in case something happens to someone on your property when your house is easily valued at over a million dollars is NOT ENOUGH. Also – if I’m paying for a private school education for my children there better not be any culinary arts or shop classes. Just saying..
What I learned: Lock the ^&% up if you don’t want anyone else in it.
Overall Grade: B+

www.FluffSmutandMurder.com

Hannah Sanders is turning sixteen. She’s a good student, she gets good grades and has nice friends, and so her parents trust her. Rather than a big flashy party, they decide to have a sweet sixteen party at their multimillion-dollar home in a wealthy Bay Area suburb (I’m picturing Lafayette or Orinda). She invites four girlfriends over for a slumber party with pizza, cake, and movies. What could possibly go wrong?

Hannah’s parents, Jeff and Kim, have a tension-filled marriage, revealed by Kim’s regular use of Ambien to get to sleep: “…there was far too much tension in her marriage to handle without a good night’s sleep.” Jeff seems to wonder how their marriage got to where it is: “Once, they’d gone to Mexico and Kim had downed tequila shots and danced on the bar in her bra. And then Kim became a mother and it was like flicking a switch. Overnight, Kim became responsible, earnest, doting…boring.”

Kim sets the ground rules for the night, giving a little speech that clearly spells them out: no boys, no booze, and no drugs. Then they pretty much leave the girls to have fun in the rec room. But Jeff wants to be the “cool Dad” so he picks up a bottle of champagne and sneaks it to them, figuring one bottle will give each girl a small glass – again, what could possibly go wrong?

Of course, things DO go wrong, with a tragic accident in the middle of the night that starts the unraveling of the façade of their picture-perfect life. Much like Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies, my guess is that for many readers there is a bit of schadenfreude as they watch things fall apart. Life in the perfect suburbs – it really can’t be THAT perfect, can it? Doesn’t this family have some of the same issues, flaws and problems as the rest of us? As things spiral downward in the story, we learn of the deception, lies, and betrayal that lie under that façade, for the girls as well as the adults. When the victim’s mother reminds her “You’re the victim here,” her daughter asks her “Don’t you remember high school at all?...No one likes a fucking victim!”

After the party, “Hannah had experienced a perspective shift. Despite the values her mother had tried to instill in her, getting straight A’s wasn’t actually the most important thing in the world. Survival, that’s what mattered. Getting through the gauntlet of tenth grade with your self-esteem intact was what counted.” When she is encouraged by her counselor to do the right thing socially following the party, she’s torn: “Hannah didn’t want to be the girl with strength of character. She wanted to be the cool girl, the popular girl, the girl with the hot boyfriend.” At the same time, Kim (Hannah’s mom) finds her self dealing with both the teenagers and the adults and realizes “There is only one thing as mean as teenagers: soccer moms.”

Told from the alternating perspectives of Hannah, each of her parents, and the victim’s mother, the pacing of the story is just right. We lean of the horrific accident early on, and we know exactly what caused it. And details about both current and past behaviors of individual adults are revealed subtly, and only later do we learn how these will impact the unfolding drama.

I was in the mood for some escapist fiction, something that was not overly challenging but was completely entertaining. This fit the bill on all counts, and I appreciate having an opportunity to read an advance copy of The Party, thanks to Gallery/Scout Press and NetGalley. Five stars for the combination of domestic suburban drama, moral dilemma, suburban skewering, and all-around good story.

A sweet sixteen birthday party for the daughter of an upper middle class family...a quiet evening in the basement of her parent's "McMansion" with several of her closest friends...a promise to mom and dad there would be no boys, drugs or alcohol...what could possibly go wrong? The Party tells the story of Hannah and her Hillcrest High (an expensive private school for the children of San Francisco's wealthy residents) posse as they break every one of her parent's rules and her birthday goes from sweet to salacious. After Hannah's best friend Ronnie is seriously injured during her party the battle lines are drawn. Ronnie's mother Lisa sues Hannah's parents for three million dollars...money Kim and Jeff Sanders can "scramble together" but will put a serious dent in their lavish lifestyle. "Mean Girl" Lauren, the ring leader of Hillcrest's most popular clique, swears her friends to secrecy about what really happened at the party while ostracizing the emotionally and physically battered Ronnie. Despite the cliches, the scariest thing about The Party is how realistic it is, with adults who try to be "cool" by acting more like their children's friends than parents, teenagers who make high school feel like a competitive sport, and the corrupting power of money. With an ending that is both predictable and terrifying, The Party is like holding a mirror into the lives of the upper class and shows a reflection that makes poverty seem like the better option.

"The Party" was perfectly paced and plotted to keep me riveted. I literally couldn't put it down. The characters are well-developed and believable, each of them both sympathetic and awful at once. What transpires during a 16th birthday party could, really, happen to anyone, which makes it realistic and frightening. What happens next is a moral dilemma that will make the reader question their own response to a situation like this. What would you do if this happened to you? What is the right thing to do?

Well worth a read. Recommended.

I liked this book, but it wasn't quite as intense as what I expected. The characters are really hard to feel any connection with or any compassion for because none of them seem to have any redeeming qualities. I did read this really quickly because I did want to find out what really happened. The only problem I had with this was that what really happened that night was kind of predictable. I really wanted a crazy twist. Maybe the end of the book hints at a crazy twist, but it is probably more revenge than a twist.

This is a quick and compelling read, but probably not a book I will be recommending to others. All the characters are pretty despicable, as i think the author intended. It made me grateful that my kids are out of high school.

All it takes is one moment in time for life to change forever, and that is all it took for the believable characters in Robyn Harding’s new novel “The Party.” All sixteen-year-old Hannah was to be accepted by the popular girls, so when they agreed to come to her birthday party, Hannah knew she needed to up her game in order to make them like her. A little alcohol, some pills and a teenager who liked to pull the strings of the people around her was all it took to tear apart the lives of a family and a teenage girl. This book is a gripping tale of tragedy that will make the reader think about their own carefully constructed lives. I was given an advanced copy of this book, and all of the opinions expressed in this review are my own.

This is another novel where I struggled to find one character I actually liked. Seems like that's happening more often. That doesn't mean it's not a good read, just that the characters were written as very flawed people. I've seen this in other books over the last few years (The Girl on the Train comes to mind).

As I said, the characters are flawed and, because of that, they felt real. We all know the mom who acts like she's better than everybody else while she's hiding some pretty large skeletons in her own closet and who doesn't remember the popularity battleground of high school? I could see this actually happening and that's part of what grips and holds your interest.

The Party is sure to hold your attention and you'll find yourself not wanting to put it down!