Keane does a brilliant job of evoking the lives of two families whose paths become tragically intertwined. I loved the way this story was told, with changing POVs that often meant you received information about one or more of the characters third hand. All the relationships felt very real - often strained and complex, but always loving. The story grapples with some big issues - mental health, grief, alcoholism, finding your place in the world, forgiveness - but it does it with such a light touch that you barely notice and just revel in the gorgeous prose. A writer to watch.

This is a good book but not quite at the level of Celeste Ng's Little Fires Everywhere. I enjoyed reading it but felt none of the characters were ever truly fleshed out.

This is a fantastic, epic family drama following the lives of two neighbouring families in New York over the course of more than 40 years. Engrossing and moving with wonderful characters. Don't miss this incredible book.

Interesting, poignant, unusual read. Two families, their lives, their loves, their flaws and their tragedies. Maybe you have to hit rock bottom, to experience the unbearable to appreciate what you have

This is the story of two families. The Gleesons and the Standhopes are not only neighbours but Francis and Brian work together. They are police officers. Brian's wife, Anne has mental health issues. The families don't really get along. Anne hates her son Peter's relationship with the Gleesons daughter, Kate. A horrific tragedy occurs and we follow both families for years after the event to see how the developments affected their lives.

The story covers over forty years. Be warned its heartbreaking at times. There is so much I could and want to say but I don't want to spoil it for other readers. The characters are true to life. The pace is set just right. The two families couldn't be any more different to each other. I loved this book from beginning to end and I do recommend this book.

I would like to thank NetGalley, Penguin Michael Joseph and the author Mary Beth Keane for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A satisfying family saga with well drawn characters I came to really care about and, although we parted with a sense of optimism about their future, I was sad to say goodbye!

A very well written and compassionate family saga. It spans over four decades in the lives of the Gleeson and Stanhope families.
Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope meet when they join NYPD and end up living next door to each other in the suburbs. The adults aren’t close but the children form a strong friendship. However once night a tragic event changes everything and the families are torn apart. Kate and Peter's friendship is scuppered and they lose touch until reconnecting years later. The events of the tragic night still impact their lives and they face difficult choices.
The book navigates relationships, tragedy, addiction and mental illness. An enjoyable read and recommended.

This is a well written study of family life; beginning in the 1970’s when two rookie police officers first meet. It is hard not to become embroiled in the events which overshadow the police officers and their families. All issues are sensitively approached and although bleak at times there always seemed to be a way forward.
From reading the blurb I was expecting a different type of story but I have been pleasantly surprised by the turn of events the story took.

This is yet another book that has left me hoping that the characters have a good life after the story ends. This is certainly moving and perhaps a bit heartbreaking in places depending on your personal background. There are some pretty strong characters here but for me it was all about Peter and he had my emotions all over the place while watching his life unfold.

‘Ask Again, Yes’ covers forty years in the lives of two Irish-American families in New York. Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope, their wives Lena and Anna, and their children, live next door to each other in the suburbs. For a while the men work together as policemen, with a picture of their wife and a prayer card to St Michael tucked into their caps. If they hope that their families develop a warm neighbourly friendship, it is not to be. Haunted by what she ran away from in Ireland, Anna Stanhope loses a baby and the familial tendency to mental illness (the one which led to shameful unconsecrated graves in the homeland) crystallises. Her lonely and frightened son Peter focuses his ambitions to marrying Kate, the Gleesons’ youngest daughter.
One chaotic evening everything falls apart. The Stanhopes cleave. The Gleesons cling. The years pass.
We are privy to what is unspoken between them. Families who don’t talk about anything real, who tiptoe around their feelings, dusting around the elephant in the room, somehow get older, finding different dysfunctions to manage their unexplored anguish. Only crises provoke real understanding, and even then it’s contained and constrained by an emotional inarticulacy that’s painful to read. Somehow, though, there’s a beauty in it. Understanding arrives decades after it might have done, but it does arrive.
‘Ask Again, Yes’ has echoes Anne Tyler and Kent Haruf, but its soul is of the Irish immigrant experience. Even if that's not our story, we know and recognise the family who stays together - or falls apart - without ever raising a voice, even after the worst happens. A memorable novel.

This is a really gripping and moving family saga, very reminiscent, as others have said, of the novels of Anne Tyler. The story covers forty plus years in the lives of the Stanhope and Gleeson families, particularly the childhood sweethearts Peter and Kate and Peter's mother Anne. The characters on the page are all interesting and relatable as they make mistakes, struggle and fail, learn to compromise and make the best of what they have. I felt the book had an almost old-fashioned but very powerful message about love and loyalty within families and especially within marriage.

The character of Anne Stanhope is fascinating and beautifully written, enabling a slow shift in the reader's sympathy towards her even as she remains essentially inscrutable. With other character arcs I felt a little frustrated at times, certain central characters seemed to almost dissolve through the passage of the book. That is a minor gripe however about a very well-written and uplifting family saga.

Ask Again, Yes is the story of two families who are neighbours in suburban New York in the 1970s. The two male heads of the houses, Francis and Brian, work in the New York City police. Francis’s wife, Lena, is unhappy with the move to this quiet town in the suburbs and misses being in the city. She is very happy when Brian and Anne move next door but then sad as Anne seems to want to keep herself to herself and does not want to socialise. Their two children, Kate and Peter, are close in age though and quickly become childhood friends. Peter’s mother, Anne, carries on being aloof and very private all though Peter’s childhood and seem very anxious. And then a terrible violent act happens that tears the two families apart just as Kate and Peter become teenagers and their friendship is deepening.

This is a well-written book about how two families deal with the violence that erupted and the long drawn out aftermath as we are brought from the 1970s up to present day with their lives. It is a tale of mental health issues, alcoholism, love and forgiveness. The writing is good but I didn’t especially enjoy reading it at times. While it deals well with some very dark subjects I’m not sure I would have read it if I’ve known more about the subject matter.

With thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Michael Joseph Communciations for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I was given a copy of this book by NetGalley in return for an honest review.

Ask,Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane is a story about two people, Kate and Peter, born around the same time to parents living next door to each other. Kate the youngest of three girls and Peter an only child. Their friendship develops and the link between them is strong but Peter's mother disapproves. Both of their fathers are Police officers who worked together for a short time, but that relationship never grew and Kate's father has little time for his neighbours. When the children are 14 an event one evening changes their futures forever and their relationship os put on hold as each of them tries to forget the events of that night and move on with their lives.

I will be really honest, it took me four attempts at starting this book before i finally got into it. The first chapter about when the two fathers were working together didn't inspire me to read on, but i knew i had to persevere with it and i'm glad i did.
The story is quite quick paced it jumps through time quite quickly so starts with Francis and Brian working together, to when the children were born, to teenage years, then adulthood, and if i'm honest I don't like books that do this, I feel like i'm missing out on important aspects of their lives. At the same time with this story I felt you needed to know what happened after 'the event', how it affected each of the characters and what happened to Kate and Peter's relationship.
Overall i liked the story but it didn't grip me, I could have easily put it down and not found out what happened and it wouldn't have bothered me. The story was okay, but wasn't anything special, the characters were okay too but again nothing or no-one really stood out

I gave the book 2 stars on Goodreads

Two policemen in America, they become neighbour's. One has three daughters, the other a boy. The youngest, Kate, forms a friendship with Peter.. The book takes the reader through a journey of discovery.. a poignant book, following the different paths of two families following a fateful night. The ending cleverly brings the book to an unexpected conclusion. Sad, positive, charming, a discovery and totally recommended.

Oh my goodness. For some reason I had difficulty getting into this book when I first picked it up - definitely my fault, not the author's, because since I picked it up again two days ago it has barely left my hands since. It was beautifully written and thought-provoking. I feel absolutely bereft now that it is over.

Ive read a previous book by this author (Fever) and I was not disappointed with this latest book. I really enjoyed it and it was an easy read, the structure was easy to follow. I would certainly recommend this book to my book club.

3.5 – 4 stars

ASK AGAIN, YES is something of a heavy read with challenging topics; I felt like I had completed a marathon when I’d finished but I mean that in a good way. The book had wrung me out emotionally and I needed time to rest my mind and think afterwards.

This is a complex story of two families across two generations. Their lives were so interwoven and yet they were not close to one another. Through proximity, circumstance, tragedy and then attraction, they were repeatedly brought together and pushed one another away.

The storyline starts with the parents of these two families but over the whole of the book, it felt like the story centred on Peter and Kate. I held my breath over these two and I didn’t feel a completion at the end; I don’t think the reader is supposed to. Anne was incredibly difficult to like as a character and I admire the author for where she went with mental illness and this character. We rarely see books that will go to the extent of exposing the psychology and behaviours of someone with this level of illness. I liked Francis, I found him solid, reliable and real. George was the unsung hero of this book.

Most readers will feel the heaviness of the topics expored in this book, which include acute psychosis, addiction, cheating, first love, the effect of trauma on the psyche, grief and loss and abandonment. It’s a lot but it didn’t feel unrealistic for the timescale, the range of characters and the narrative gently and sometimes bluntly led you into these issues with skill.

This was an impressive, memorable and epic story. I felt a lack of completion overall and needed a bit more in terms of closure. Mary Beth Keane wrote the complexity with simplicity and I would read her work again.

Thank you to Michael Joseph for the early review copy.

This book was such a fantastic read and I enjoyed every single page. It started off quite slow, but in hindsight I realise the author was setting the scene for the rest of the story. It is a tale of family issues, trauma, illness, mental health, addiction, love, hope, forgiveness. I enjoyed how the chapters were told from points of view of different characters and how the author juggled the timelines by telling stories through those characters. They all seemed so realistic that at times I had to remind myself that this was all fiction. Keane’s prose is exquisite, so effortless and simple, making it easy to read. I have the utmost compassion the characters and their stories will say with me for the longest time. I will definitely be happy to read more from the author in the future and catch up on her previous books. I would highly recommend this book to everyone.

A grown up love story, with all its bumps and obstacles along the way. Endearing without the saccharine.

'He told her he'd been thinking about it for a while, about a thing she'd said a few weeks back: that not all problems looked the same, but that didn't mean they weren't problems'
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Kate and Peter grew up living side by side, experiencing everything together, although their parents were never thrilled about their friendship. The story explores the Gleeson and the Stanhope families and how there lives interlock before and after a tragedy.
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I can already feel a book hangover coming on because this was incredible. Believe the hype people, this raw and emotional story had me absolutely gripped. I felt for every single character and needed desperately to know how their lives panned out. Keane's writing is so beautiful, and she leaves no stone left unturned. The book spans over 40 years but I never felt like it dragged, her writing was so effortless to read. How human and flawed all of the characters were really reminded me of Miracle Creek, so if you liked that, you'll love this! I highly recommend this book to everybody, it is out in the UK on August 8th so go get it preordered!💃