Bill Clegg, the highly acclaimed and bestselling author of DID YOU EVER HAVE A FAMILY, returns with THE END OF THE DAY, a complex and layered, but deeply emotional novel about a long-hidden secret and the year that the truth finally comes to light.

As he did in his fiction debut, Clegg kicks off his second novel by introducing three seemingly disparate characters, and then slowly tightening the narrative around them. First we meet Dana, a stick-thin, fashionable and highly demanding heiress with a briefcase full of secrets. She is dead set on tracking down her childhood best friend, Jackie, a retired widow with two adult children. Just as Dana sets off from her New York apartment for the suburbs of Connecticut, Lupita, a 67-year-old taxi driver in Hawaii, receives an unexpected phone call from the daughter of her recently deceased estranged sister. While it is not immediately clear what these women could possibly have in common now or even 50 years ago, Clegg writes sharply drawn vignettes of their present-day lives and their traumatic pasts, circling around them and pulling their ties tighter and tighter until an explosive secret emerges.

Through flashbacks to their childhoods, we learn that Dana was always wealthy and spoiled, but (perhaps unexpectedly) delighted in the company of her best friend, a real middle-class girl named Jackie. Spurred by Dana’s desires and Jackie’s need to keep up, the two build their own little world within Dana’s hidden but expansive home and charge homecoming dresses, bedspreads and more to Dana’s family account. As we watch them grow as friends and young women, Clegg also introduces the Lopezes, Mexican immigrants who support Dana’s family in both their Manhattan apartment and their country home. Closest in age to the girls is the youngest Lopez daughter, Lupita, a brilliant and caring young lady who is often thrown into the center of her family’s struggles as members of the working class living among the privileged.

Although they come from vastly different backgrounds, the three girls’ lives are intertwined as children and as teens. Clegg offers readers several emotionally taut vignettes of fancy dinners, childhood bullying and high school crushes to illustrate how simply --- and often dangerously --- their lives twisted and revolved around one another’s. Each snapshot is rife with nuance, heavy themes of socioeconomic class and even an atmospheric sense of time.

As the connection among the women becomes clear, Clegg throws entirely new characters into the mix: Hap, a man who is watching his estranged father die in a hospital, and Hap’s mother, Alice, who is caring for Hap’s newborn daughter. Once again, it is not immediately clear how they are connected to Dana, Jackie and Lupita, yet Clegg has earned his readers’ trust enough to make the journey doubly satisfying. THE END OF THE DAY is an intricately plotted and difficult-to-describe novel, but as he did in DID YOU EVER HAVE A FAMILY, he succeeds in weaving together characters, storylines and histories for something far greater than the sum of its parts.

Clegg writes with the fluidity of a far more experienced writer, and his ability to evoke time and place and accurately capture the social and economic rulings of any era is nearly unmatched. That said, THE END OF THE DAY is a highly ambitious novel, and I fear that the plotting did not always live up to the prose.

Juggling several characters is never easy, and though Dana, Jackie and Lupita are obviously, factually, very different, I struggled to keep their stories separate through at least the first third of the book --- a bit too long to develop an emotional attachment to any of them. Each woman is hiding a secret, and none of them are entirely blameless for what happened all those years ago. To his credit, Clegg does not strive to make excuses for any of his characters, nor shield his readers from their most unattractive qualities, which is a commendable decision. However, it did make it difficult for me to find someone to root for, a character to whom I could latch on and depend on as the backbone of the novel. Lupita comes closest, for it is she who suffers the most, but even she seemed just out of reach.

Clegg is known for his ability to write affecting, resonant relationships and bring together wildly different types of characters in believable ways. THE END OF THE DAY is all about these sort of complicated bonds, and though he succeeds about half the time, I found many of the relationships in the novel to be too intricate. I enjoy character-driven books with multiple perspectives, but I had to reread some passages to understand exactly how one character knew another. It certainly would have spoiled the plot, but still I longed for a family tree.

Nevertheless, Clegg remains a brilliant and skillful writer, and his unmatched emotional acuity means that I definitely will be reading whatever he writes next.

I am a huge fan of character driven stories. I like nothing more than getting deep inside the mind of character. So, when I read the premise of The End of the Day it sounded perfect for me.

While the writing was excellent, it was difficult for me to keep the characters and what was happening straight in my mind.

The story is told from several different points of view and takes place during several different time periods. It was like every time I picked up the book, I was starting over. Trying to remember who was who and how did they know each other.

There are parts that I still am not sure that I ever really grasped.

I did enjoy the writing and was interested in finding out “the truth” about a major event in the story, I just struggled to keep track of the characters.

I received an ARC of the book.

I so expected to love this book because Bill Clegg’s last book, 𝘋𝘪𝘥 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘏𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘢 𝘍𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘺, was absolutely stunning in every possible way. So, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘌𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘋𝘢𝘺 had big shoes to fill and it just didn’t do it for me. If I’m being really honest, there was nothing about it that truly worked. This book was completely character driven, with no real plot. I often love a good character driven novel, but in this I found it difficult to like or even care about most of the characters. A couple that were more innocent, I felt sympathy for, but the main characters of Dana, Jackie and Lupita were all awful in their own individual ways. Dana was controlling, Jackie manipulative, and Lupita sneaky. Clegg did women SO well in 𝘋𝘪𝘥 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘏𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘢 𝘍𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘺, but in this he failed them all. It pains me to give this grade, but I have to be honest!

Note: I received an ARC of this book from Gallery/Scout Press (in print and via NetGalley) in exchange for my honest thoughts.

Wow. No adjectives required. Just wow. I was slow to figure out what these different characters had to do with one another. Once I finally began to understand, the sadness and tragedy of the repercussions of their history was unstoppable, an obvious end to a senseless chain of events.
Bill Clegg writes with such unemotional emotion, you want to scream. His characters hurt themselves the most, even as they’re trying to do what seems to be the right thing to do. The interweaving, the overlapping, the cause and effect of their actions are nerve-wracking but believable. I’m hooked for life. I absolutely love authors that can bring out this level of emotion in the reader.
Thanks to NetGalley and Gallery / Scout Press for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you NetGalley for introducing me to this author through this e-galley. I liked a lot of things about this book: it was well-written for the most part, and I liked the way author Clegg slowly brings different characters and stories together so that by the end you see how it all intersects. I like the way the POV switches between characters. However, I didn’t really love or care what happend to any of the characters so I struggled to stay interested in the story. I need a main character to love and root for and I didn't!! Big flaw!!

Thank you NetGalley, Gallery Books, Scout Publishing and Bill Clegg for the advance readers copy of The End of the Day.

It was an interesting story centering on three young women lives through the years and the secret that bind them. The character development was good. However, for me the story jump around a bit much.

The End of the Day was an interesting story of characters from very different backgrounds intertwined in complex ways, carrying a heavy burden from long ago. Told through a span of lifetimes, this book is very reflective and carefully crafted. Thank you NetGalley, publisher and author for the e-reader for review. All opinions are my own.

Oh my goodness! Bill Clegg has the “queen bee & wanna bee’s” of young girls down! “Oh the tangled webs we weave” (Sir Walter Scott) is what I kept thinking as I read this book.

There are several characters in this book with widely varying socio-economic backgrounds. At its center are 3 young ladies. Two of the girls are friends by bland matters of convenience, by that I mean one parent offered to have a girl over to their home to see their horses and meet his daughter. The girls live close to one another, one girl has envy, one girl has power. They both have an angle, they cling to each other, but the friendship never rings true.

In the beginning of the book it bounces from person to person in adulthood. I do admit to thinking, “Wait. Who is this now?” (But) Then it settles more into focus on the lives of Jackie & Dana continuing to flip back and forth reflecting on when they were young and considering how it brought them to “the end of the day” (current time.) The story also includes ripple effects, other people who were affected, but didn’t necessarily have the same experience of the situation. So, there are many secrets, many misunderstandings, and unresolved issues that changed how they lived their adult lives.

The writing is very good, but the story itself was a disappointment to me. The narrative is meandering and confusing at times with the switching characters and timeframes. I didn't like any of the characters and couldn't identify with anybody. So many secrets, so many lives disrupted and changed by untruths! It was sort of a chore to get through this book but I give it 3 stars for the quality of the writing.

This book fell flat for me, but I read it all the way through so I guess that's something.

The writing style as far as word choices and flow go, was compelling and talented, but the stories just didn't sit well with me, none of the characters made sense, these women in their 60s acting half dead already and a late in life father acting like a teenager. There was little to no development of any sort, the characters didn't evolve, the story didn't resolve. I just felt let down by this book.

I have struggled on what to write. The writing is stunning but I struggled with quantifying the timeline and the different characters. I didn’t personally connect with anyone and that made it a challenge to read. I think that the perspectives are good but I personally struggle to keep characters in mine i my head. I would recommend if you enjoyed Bill Clegg’s previous work!

3.5 stars

I don’t remember how I ended up getting an advance copy of Bill Clegg’s The End of the Day, as I’d never heard of this author before, despite the fact that his book prior to this one, titled Did You Ever Have a Family, was quite popular and well-received back when it came out (which I haven’t read yet but intend to at some point). When I first read the vaguely-worded summary to this book, I was definitely intrigued, as it sounded like an interesting, albeit complicated story. As I started reading, I already knew early on that this would be a character-driven story, which was fine by me of course, since those are the types of stories I usually enjoy most. Given both of these elements, along with the fact that the writing was quite good, I truly thought I would end up loving this one. Now that I’ve finished, I can say that, while I did like this one overall, I didn’t love it like I initially thought I would.

For me, the strongest element of this story were the characters, all of whom were realistically-drawn in a way that, though most of them were unlikable, I couldn’t help still rooting for them. Part of this, I believe, is due to the way the author structured the narrative, with each chapter told from the alternating perspectives of each character. I felt that this worked well in the sense that I really got to know each character – through their respective backstories, I was able to understand their struggles as well as the nuances of their relationships, which made it easier for me to relate to them. If I had to describe it, I would say that this was an in-depth character study on the complexity of human relationships, which is the part of the story that appealed to me the most given how much I usually enjoy character-driven stories.

With that said however, the problem I had with this book is that the author made the story way more complicated than it needed to be, which had the effect of making the reading experience exhausting and a bit frustrating. While I liked that the story was told from multiple characters’ points of views, with each chapter providing a new “revelation” that brings us (the readers) closer and closer to “the truth” of the defining event that happens, what I didn’t like was how long it took to get there. For me, the story was really slow and drawn out and meandered way too much – at times, there were inexplicably long, exhaustive descriptions of things that seemed to not have anything to do with the story and ended up bogging down the plot rather than advancing it. The closest analogy I can think of to describe the experience is going on a road trip where the person driving decides to take the scenic route, but drives at a painstakingly slow 20 mph so everyone in the car can truly admire and enjoy the view – yes, the view is lovely and we see some interesting things, but after 5 exhaustive hours of it, I feel like that kid in the backseat of the car repeatedly asking “Are we there yet???”

Indeed, this was quite the reading experience for me – on the one hand, I wanted to keep reading because I was invested in the characters and was curious to see what happens to them, but on the other hand, I just wanted the story to end already. I think that if it hadn’t taken so long to get to the point, I definitely would’ve enjoyed this one so much more. Even though this book didn’t completely work for me, I’m still interested in reading Clegg’s previous work, especially Did You Ever Have a Family, which so many of my friends seemed to love.

Received ARC from Gallery / Scout Press via NetGalley.

Bill Clegg writes such a flowing dramatic story that slowly unfolds. I found his writing so smart and the characters he describes so real. The connections between Dana Goss and her wealthy family and the Mexican family they employ illuminates the haves and the have nots, and it's not just their employees and how Dana's family seems to dictate their lives, it's also about the other family that moves in to a tiny house nearby with a daughter Dana's age when they are young. Dana's friendship with Jackie seems at times genuine, but, with a best friend like that, who needs enemies!

This book is told in a style where each chapter voices of the characters tell their part of a story. The main characters are Dana, Jackie, Lupita, Christopher and Hap. I usually enjoy when you hear how things happened from all perspectives because as we all know life can sometime be a game of telephone. Anyway, without giving away the plot this books tackles wealth, education, race, and poverty. Things that we are all dealing with today. It's great book for book clubs beacuse there will be people who will love some characters and some who will hate them. The discussions will be lively and hopefuly though provoking.

Events from a fateful summer 49 years ago resurface with the death of Christopher. An aging increasingly forgetful heiress returns to the Connecticut estate she hasn't visited in decades to make amends with her childhood friend, Jackie. Meanwhile, Lupita has been driving a taxi in Hawaii for years, trying to forget what happened to her that summer nearly 50 years ago.

And Hap, a first time father at nearly 50, abandons his wife and newborn daughter when he finds her father collapsed in a hotel lobby. But he is about to learn more about parenthood than he anticipated.

Beautifully written, THE END OF THE DAY explores friendship and hatred and how their intersection has devastating effects. #TheEndOfTheDay #NetGalley

I enjoyed Bill Clegg’s previous book so was looking forward to this. Thanks to Netgalley and Gallery for the early copy.

Unfortunately this one fell flat for me. I am quitting it 20% in and I still don’t have a clear view on the characters or what the story is about.

So to be brief and to the point, sadly this was a miss for me. Bill Clegg is a wonderful writer and when it started I was initially invested. But his non linear story of a group of people who all intersect in some way and spans sixty years or so began to lose my interest and attention as I found myself stopping to remind myself who this person was again and how they knew so and so. In addition by constantly shifting his characters, just when I was attaching to one, the book was off onto someone else creating a character whip lash. I also think that a large part was due to my interest of some characters who only featured in the first half of the book and then faded out.
I’ll be the first to admit this week has been particularly distracting with the first Presidential debate and the aftermath, but as I slid into the final third of the book, I was finding more compelling reasons to put it down than pick it up.

If you were to choose any one day in your life and explore the connections you have to everyone you interact with during that chosen day...you'd have the premise of THE END OF THE DAY by Bill Clegg.

The community of characters in this unique look at one day's life and love is well developed as each of them relives the history that has brought them all together today. The community is a diverse one. Rich people whose friendships are typically based on their money and what it can buy, the staff that keep their lives running smoothly and the friends and acquaintances that revolve around moneyed people. Their interlocked history contains many happy memories but so many secrets that we are not sure if the memories are real or manufactured. This is a surprisingly good book. It seemed a little disjointed at the first but the author was building up steam and then the story took off at a quick pace.

I'd not read any of the author's back library, but his writing skills are amazing. the story flowed well with no starts and stops even though there were multiple voices telling their version of history. The varied, often different versions of an event didn't seem strange, just what individuals see even when in a group. A very good read overall.

I found this book quite interesting. Told by several narrators, each of the characters were unique and well developed. While learning about the characters I was extremely interested to find out how they would all come together to unite the story. It was quite interesting to read about their different perspective on things that had taken place and the effects it I found this book quite interesting. Told by several narrators, each of the characters were unique and well developed. While learning about the characters I was extremely interested to find out how they would all come together to unite the story. It was quite interesting to read about their different perspective on things that had taken place and the effects it had on their lives.had on their lives.

Also reviewed on B&N and Kobo

I had not read Bill Clegg's first book; so I went into this book not know about his writing style or the types of books he writes. I have to admit I have mixed feelings about this book. While it could have been a truly interesting character study of how "current day" people's lives are intertwined, it fell a bit lacking to me. I never gravitated towards or against any of the characters. In fact, I was a little late in writing this and I had a hard time remembering what the story was about. Maybe that is why I am having a hard time writing this review.

Thanks to NetGalley for an advanced electronic copy to review in exchange for my honest opinion.