You had me at multigenerational family drama (my catnip!) but unfortunately this story involved a poaching subplot where folks brutally mutilated elephants, and I was not here for it. Not for me.

Well this took a turn I wasn't expecting! I'm all about bizarre and flawed characters--give me all of that--but I had a hard time settling into this one. It felt scattered in subject and genre, and the multiple POV probably didn't help narrow the focus. Perhaps a case of right book wrong reader since it seems lots of people were able to find redeeming qualities and I'm just feeling like I missed something.

This book started off slow for me, but about a quarter of the way in, I was hooked. It made me think of a bit of The Immortalists, with the telling of each siblings' stories, but that is where the similarities end. I enjoyed the book once all the siblings started their journey home.

I love mulitgenerational family dramas and this one was full of promise, but it felt lik the author was trying to accomplish too much. There were mulitple side stories that were ultimately distracting rather than supporting the story.

Also, the poaching and mutilation of elephants was the ultimate deal breaker for me.

The Resolutions is a story about three adult siblings - Sam, Jonah and Gavin who are living very separate lives. Sam is a ballerina living in Russia, Jonah is studying elephants in Gabon and Gavin is an actor in LA. They all come home to Chicago for Christmas. Each is struggling with their own issues and secrets.

I really enjoyed this story about the sibling relationship. I would compare the feel of this story to Commonwealth or The Dutch House.

Thank you to Random House and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

CW: ivory poaching, drug addiction

I struggled to get into this book myself, but I will definitely be recommending it to fans of family dramas.

I had problems sticking with this. I have started and stopped a few time but calling it a DNF at 45%. I like dysfunctional families but need a plot.

I’m judging a 2020 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books, I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got this book from the perspective pile into the read further pile.

It had been two days since she’d gotten high, and that was a problem.

Well plotted, clean writing.

I had a hard time getting into this book as the first half described each of the three siblings along with their backgrounds and dilemmas. Each of them had opportunities for getting along in their chosen field and each had demons and made decisions which knocked them down and made their aspirations unattainable.
When they got to Chicago for Christmas, they reached a crossroads where they had to face each other and realize that something had to change. I didn't quite see how they all ended up going to Africa rather than their respective homes, but maybe an editor tightened that up in the final edition. I felt sorry for Jonah as he ended up with the other 2 in his home base and unintentionally endangered them. I do think, however, that the 3 of them managed to come out of Africa changed for the better.
There were a few unlikely events in the novel, and too many co-incidences, but I think that the last 25% pretty well tied the story together- maybe a little too nicely, but I was OK with that. The key point that I got out of the book was how one's choices can create unintended consequences.
I received this book from NetGalley, Random House, Ballentine Books in exchange for an honest review.

QUICK TAKE: you had me at multigenerational family drama. you lost me at a poaching subplot that involved main characters cutting the faces off of elephants. Totally took me out of it. Also, the siblings never quite clicked for me, and the strange drug rehab journey to a Ayahuasca-esque village in Africa felt like a completely different book. Horrible, not very good people doing horrible, not very good things. Not for me.

This book had no plot until the last 25%. Until then it just related the banal details of the lives of three siblings who converge on Chicago to visit their parents for Christmas. Samantha is a drug-addicted ballerina working in Moscow until she gets fired for unreliability. Gavin is a mediocre actor who’s TV series has been cancelled. Other than unemployment, his problem is deciding between two women, neither of whom is all that into him. Jonah has the only interesting storyline. He is a grad student studying elephants in Ghana, although he too is doing a mediocre job. Then he gets involved in an ivory smuggling scheme, leading to heartbreaking and disgusting details of the ivory trade. All three of the siblings are whiny, immature and self pitying. Honestly, I can’t tell you what the point of all of this is. The writing wasn’t bad, so maybe it’s just my mood. Given the state of the world I don’t want to hear about these people.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

I honestly don’t know what positive spin to put on this one... I didn’t get it. Dysfunctional characters, bizarre plot lines for each sibling, nothing like able or redemptive or even rational about them... it was baffling to me. But hey, if you like books that have heroin addicts and elephant poachers and Russian dance troupes and failed LA actors and ivory dealers and sibling drama and affairs and drug trips in the forest, this one’s for you!!!

A big, beautiful story of love, family, and second chances. The author gives us a look at the inner core of three siblings
Many thanks to Ballantine Books and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

Books about dysfunctional family relationships, especially those that look at grown-up sibling dynamics, are some of my favorite books to read. The Resolutions by Brady Hammes has all the necessary ingredients to be a great book about grown-up siblings and how their relationships with each other have changed over the years. The story alternates between telling about the lives of Samantha, a heroin-addicted ballet dancer living in Russia; Gavin, a sitcom actor who can’t seem to find his big break in Hollywood; and Jonah, a doctoral student studying elephant communication in Africa. I appreciated getting to know these characters in the first third of the book and thought we were really headed somewhere interesting.

The problem is Hammes seemed to decide he wanted to write a thriller about halfway through the book instead of the character-driven novel he started out with. The siblings all come together at Christmas at their parents’ apartment in Chicago. I was excited by the prospect of getting to know the parents and who they were and how they contributed to the lack of direction of their grown and potentially successful children. Yet, the parents just exist in the background, with the dad stoic and silent and the mom worried and naggy. At Christmas, the three siblings hatch a plan to return to Africa with Jonah. And here is where things really fall apart. Jonah is wrapped up in some bad business with some elephant poachers, so once our story reaches Africa, the siblings are separated again and we don’t get any of the interactions between them we thought we were going to get. Instead, we get what reads like a (sort of?) thriller with kidnapping, a shoot-out, and way-too tidy resolution.

I wanted to like this book. The cover is beautiful; the premise has potential, and Hammes is a talented writer. He had some really beautiful passages and descriptions, and his ability to create interesting and flawed characters is apparent. Yet, he seemed confused about what his purpose was in this book. While all the characters end up having some sort of epiphany about their direction in life by the end, we don’t get a sense that these siblings need each other or even like each other. All that said, I will read Hammes next book because I can tell there is talent there.

This story explores the relationships between three siblings.
Sam, a talented dancer whose injury cut short her career in the states. Now she is with a troupe in Russia, but is battling drug addiction.
Her older brother Gavin is an actor who just found out his new series has been canceled.
And Jonah is living in Gabon as a researcher, observing elephants and trying to stay away from ivory poachers.
When they come together for Christmas with their parents in Chicago, they decide to embark on a path that will put them at risk and test their bonds.
Although I enjoyed the writing and the creative storyline, I didn't feel much connection with the characters and some of their actions were a little implausible.
But I am still looking forward to the next book by this author.
Thank you Random House Publishing Group- Ballantine for the e-ARC via NetGalley.

The Resolutions was an unexpected joy to read. The separate stories of three siblings, begun across different countries, are slowly drawn back together as each struggles to come to terms with personal failure. The only sister faces the end of a brilliant career ballet because of her heroin addiction; the older brother is unable to move forward in his career or sustain meaningful relationships towards the marriage and family he strongly desires; and the last sibling finds himself tangled in a web of impossible choices in his elephant research position in Gabon. I was completely drawn into each narrative. Hammes uses vibrant language to describe his characters' inner turmoil. The plot starts at three separate points around the globe - West Africa, Russia, and Los Angeles - draws everyone together in Chicago, and culminates in Gabon, in a somewhat bizarre African ritual. The ending felt a little too tidy for me, but maybe I was just skeptical that people who have made such spectacularly irresponsible decisions could have a happy ending. Nevertheless, the examination of sibling relationships was fascinating, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.

The plot of this book moves swiftly and provides an international appeal. The three siblings come together and push each other somewhat. I found the characters rather flat.

The Brennan siblings—Gavin, Jonah, and Samantha—boast impressive resumes. Gavin, living in Los Angeles, stars in a television show, Sam, a talented dancer, is a featured performer at a well-funded (if remote) Russian dance company, and Jonah, a graduate student studying elephant communication, conducts field work in the forests of Gabon.
However, as they all travel home to Chicago for the holidays, they each harbor deep anxieties. Gavin’s relationship has just ended, and his show canceled, leaving him wondering if acting is the right profession for him. Sam arrives home unemployed as her heroin addiction got her kicked out of the dance company, and Jonah has involuntarily become a courier in an ivory smuggling operation. Both Sam and Jonah desperately attempt to keep their plights hidden, while their mother advises them not to bring up Gavin’s show.

Despite their efforts, the siblings learn at least some of each other’s trials, and when Jonah returns to Gabon, Gavin and Sam leave with him, pretending for their parents’ sake that they are going back to their regular lives. In Western Africa, though, they become caught up in dangerous political and criminal unrest, and all the things that were so comfortably unspoken bubble to the surface and demand attention.

I am an only child and am fascinated by sibling relationships, and I also like to read about lives on the edge, so I was attracted by the description of The Resolutions by Brady Hammes. This debut novel contains interesting reflections and some lovely writing. It contained too much graphic detail about elephant poaching without any seeming purpose for my taste. I would have at least wanted comeuppance of the perpetrators or conveyance of why such slaughter is wrong, but those aspects were missing. Furthermore, the poaching operation was much more prevalent in the narrative than I expected.

While the novel is told entirely in third person, the perspective shifts between the three siblings, and the secondary characters are rather flat, which might be by design, to show how the siblings shine brighter than anyone else to each other. What few flashbacks there are I remember being told from Gavin’s point of view and include stories about him and Sam—Jonah is almost always excluded, which seems a strange choice.

Beyond sibling relationships, the book shows how a small decision or action can create a tidal wave of consequences. Because the initial decisions of these characters were so poor or so impetuous, summoning empathy for them was difficult.

The Resolutions was an interesting, though-provoking read, and I liked Hammes’s writing style, but I did not enjoy anything related to elephant poaching, and I thought the characterization was uneven. Overall, though, this is a solid debut, and I will definitely watch for Hammes’s future work.

What an excellent book about a family the Brennans with 3 kids who grow up close but now are having big problems that threaten their careers. I really identified with the sister Samantha and her struggles. Her two brothers also have a lot of trouble Jonah and Gavin. All very serious problems and very different.

They come together for the holidays and with their close bond try to find a resolution for all of them together. Wow, this book was really good. I highly recommend it, especially if you like a good drama and love to see a family, or siblings, trying to help another, which is rare in my big family. This book made me want to have a family like this. But don't let me fool you, their problems are very big problems, very different problems and together they try to go away together and find resolutions. This book was very emotional for me, especially identifying with Samantha and her struggles.I gave e it a 4.25 stars!


Special thanks to NetGalley, Random House, and Ballantine Books for my ARC copy of this book!

Much like "The Jetsetters", The Resolutions finds three siblings at a crossroad in their lives. A dancer, an actor, and a PHD student. All making choices and at point of change. Exploring the reality of dreams not coming true - or at least - not in the way that you had hoped.

Book about siblings are always going to rate well with me as my own family makeup is full of interesting dynamics. This book is no different.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.