4-5 stars! This was a quick read for me, which really gave me some laughs and even cries! I thought it was well written, and realistic! There was enough drama showing just how hard and impossible it truly is to be completely grown up! Highly recommend to those who like quirky books on dysfunctional families! It’s sure to bring you some laughs, cries, and other emotions!
Will make sure to buzz it up on the different platforms and use my low amazon reviewer number!

I have always loved Marian Keyes’ books. I love her writing style, I love her characters, and I love her stories. Grown Ups was no different. What a fun read!! I will say that the editing and formatting made it a little difficult to read (weird spacing, missing letters...usually for words with “ff” in them) but am confident this will all be sorted out before the final copy is released.
These characters felt like real people, and like in every family there are those you love, those you merely tolerate and those you can’t stand.
The time jumps confused me at first...I’m a little embarrassed to admit it took me almost halfway through the book to realize the time frame they were referencing was the party mentioned in the prologue. Once that clicked, the book made much more sense.
The story made me both laugh out loud and have to wipe away tears. I was legitimately sad when I got to the end of the book. I would love to read more about the Casey families...well, except for Liam. He’s a total dick.
Thank you NetGalley for the ARC

I am a fan of Marian Keyes. Her light writing style with complex characters and touch of humor never fail to please. This story opens at a family dinner party and centers around the Casey brothers, Johnny, Ed and Liam and their wives and families. It shines a spotlight on family secrets, hidden for the sake of family and social appearances. The characters are well crafted with flaws and dysfunctional families.

Unfortunately, I didn't find this book to be as engaging as other books by this author, but it is still a good read!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the e-ARC.

Another dysfunctional family drama I read this year. This is a long book and it was quite enjoyable.

I realized that when I read this book, I knew that this book is not going to be a book for everyone. I guess I was in a good mood when I picked up this book. It easily for me to dive in into the whole family drama, like I was drawn to it.

The writing was magical. The Casey family is totally a dysfunctional family and I liked reading about them. It started from the birthday celebration dinner and the narrative goes back six months to get to the present. So many things happened during the past six months to Casey family. It was fun to read about every event told by the narrative including the family get togethers for Easter, the fraught wedding anniversary, Jessie’s birthday, the murder mystery weekend at the hotel which result the humiliation and laughter because of the poor preparation by the hotel that organizes it.

It also touches on grief, loss, love and secrets. This family is not perfect but they are only human. They are so bad at decision making, always having ill thoughts and always making mistakes. But all in all, this family drama was entertaining and fun to read.

Thank you, NetGalley and Michael Joseph for sharing Grown Ups with me in return for an honest review.

It's hard to rate this properly because this was a DNF for me. I liked the premise of the story and looked forward to reading it, however, the formatting and letter omissions made it impossible to read at times. I've seen a few other reviewers mention it but maybe it didn't happen to all of the copies? Anyway, too much of it was unreadable to attempt to carry on, which is unfortunate.

*Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing this review copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

I was excited to receive an ARC from Netgalley of Marian Keyes new book. As other early reviewers mention, I wish it had been edited a bit more before receiving it. It was missing letters in words and some sentences had no spacing making it difficult to stay in the story.

Grown Ups is about the Casey clan in Ireland. A Modern Family type mix of families living in Dublin and spending a ton of time together. I enjoyed all the characters, except for Liam. Seeing the growth and change for most of them was believable. I do wish there had been more depth to Liam and more closure with his relationship with his daughters. However at over 600 pages this book didn't need more stories. It did seem as though some things were repeated just from another character's perspective and that could help shorten this book Overall though it was a good read about a family full of drama.

From the outside the Caseys look like the perfect extended family. They're extremely close and loving with amazing, successful lives. It's all an illusion that they're struggling to maintain, but a few minutes of brutal honesty brings it all tumbling down. This book was excellent. The characters were real and endearingly flawed. With one or two exceptions I was rooting for them all to have their happily ever after. Sometimes the thing you fear the most is what you need to be truly happy.

Grown Ups with a bang of family drama that hooks you in and makes you feel as if you simply must find out what happened to each of these characters and how the situation unfolded.

The characters in “Grown UPS” are all very... human. They are flawed. They can be self-centered, insecure, controlling, rash, and sometimes lash out at others. I wanted to throttle more than one of them on more than one occasion. Some characters that I thought I’d love, I ended up being not so fond of... but that’s what makes Marian Keyes’ s characters REAL.

The novel tends to jump around in some places, as if a paragraph or two had been misplaced, a tidbit about a set of characters placed in the midst of other dialog. It made it take longer for me to read that I believe it would have otherwise. Overall, an enjoyable read!

I have never read any of Marian's previous books but was aware that she was a very popular author and I had heard good things about her books so was looking forward to this one. But I just could not seem to get into it. I could not care for the characters and found them annoying, and there were far too many of them. Or perhaps it was the constant changing of time periods throughout the book. In the end I had to give up on this. I am so disappointed. I am sorry to say I had to give up on it in the end.

I literally can't believe I picked up and read a book of 656 pages in two days, but even more shocking is the fact that I didn't want it to end. "Grown Ups" is a funny, witty and unforgettable family drama that left me genuinely attached to the characters.

In this novel, we meet a very normal (aka messy and imperfect) Irish family, the Caseys:
- Johnny and Jessie - rich and married with five kids: Dilly, TJ, Bridey, Saoirse and Ferdia, the two oldest from Jessie's previous marriage to Johnny's deceased best friend
- Ed and Cara - struggling with money and married with two kids: Tom and Vinnie
- Liam and Nell -struggling for shambles of a career and newly married with a large age gap; Liam's two children from his previous marriage live in America
- Ferdia - twenty-one year old son of Johnny and Jessie struggling with university and relationships.

The opening scene depicts Johnny's fiftieth birthday party when due to a concussion, Cara is suddenly unable to tell a lie, which results in letting some ugly cats out of a bag. The story then goes back to six month earlier and the individual stories begin to unfold.

Marian Keyes has a wonderful gift for tackling complex problems such as overspending, desire, eating disorders, infidelity, poor parenting and refugee rights in a wise and compassionate way.

However, the sheer number of family members and side characters makes it difficult to keep track of who is who, especially at the beginning. On top of that, each character is faced with their own issues. It takes quite some determination to commit so such a sizable novel when you don't know if you're going to love it; that's why I believe this book should have been split into two parts. That being said, I really did love the story and will likely be picking up other books by Marian Keyes.

*Thank you to the Publisher for a free advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Ooph.

This is so hard to rate!

I am a longtime fan of Marian Keyes and love her works.

Grown Ups for me just missed the mark.

The beginning was kind of awesome starting near the end when everything falls apart and then goes back and works up to what kicked it all off. The problem was that once it went back in time it was a VERY slow build and way too many characters (TWO named Dilly). It took me until at least midway to sort out how they were all related and tied in with one another and I honestly still don't know how many kids Jess has.

I put it down and went to another book, which is something I rarely do, and went back to it after a Harry Potter binge.

FINALLY it picked up steam in the final third and I enjoyed the end.

Overall it's an interesting story but wayyyyy too many characters complicated the story and I feel it could have been edited tighter. This doesn't reflect the rating but the e-book had an error in formatting that made it very difficult to read as well.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for an eARC copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I'm not sure if I was just unlucky but many letters were missing from each word, so I found it difficult to read but I perseveered!

I absolutely love Marianne Keyes and have read all of her books, unfortunately although I still love her I don't think this book was as good as some of her others. (But to be fair,I have never written a book so it must be so difficult to live up to expectations when you are such a good writer!)

I think the issue with this story is that there are too many characters, the timeline seems to jump around and I think she tried to address too many issues (eating disorders, veganism, ageism, environmental and asylum seekers) and I think it was just too much. Saying that as I got near the end I started to figure out who's husband was who's and enjoyed the end of the book.

If you haven't read Marianne Keyes before you may enjoy this, but if you don't, I beg you to read one of her earlier books which are hilarious.

This book was challenging for me. The formatting of the ARC was way off and I found that the missing letters in so many words really threw me off.

Aside from that, I did not connect with the characters in this story. The author threw so many quirky characters at the reader in the first chapter of the book and I found myself having to keep track of each of them and their unique story lines.

I also did not love the setting of this story as I felt removed from its cultural and dialect specifics.

#NetGalley #GrownUps

A story with complex characters with many flaws.
All families have their issues. Each character had their own unique traits.
Ferdia was my favourite. He had the most character development.

A novel about a sprawling family in Ireland and it's various generation, this novel was a do not finish for me. The plot centers on the Casey brothers and their wives. Johnny and Jessie run a successful business, Ed and Cara are the middle-class hard-working family members, and Liam and Nell, recently married after his painful divorce. The plot is mostly told through the three wives perspectives, with Nell the outsider observing the family dynamics from afar.

Each of these women also have their own demons, with Jessie a serious shopaholic, Cara has binge-eating disorder, and Nell in a marriage that her husband only seems somewhat invested in. These are all real issues that people deal with, but hearing about one women's jealousy and sadness over the way her sister-in-law looks -- or a woman over-buying as a way to gain a high in her demanding life -- are well-worn tropes that felt clichéd. The could be a way to include that part of the characters' lives in a new and nuanced way, but this book does not do it. I didn't want to keep reading about how much Cara hates her body and stress-eats chocolate, or how Nell's husband won't grow-up and be a parent to his children, so I stopped reading. It's possible the book improves and the women gain more dimension, but I couldn't keep reading to find out.

Impossible not to love Marian - she's a national treasure. She handles dramas deftly yet wears her heart on her sleeve. Another great read from her.

I am a big fan of Marian Keyes but had read quite a few mixed reviews about this book. Yes, it is quite lengthy but I was so disappointed when it finished. Enjoyed every minute of this book!
There are three Casey men, Johnny who is married to Jessie with 3 daughters and 2 step children from when Jessie was married to his best friend Rory. Then there is Ed who is married to Cara, and has two boys. They appear to have the perfect marriage but not all is at it appears. Then there is Liam who is married to his second wife Nell. They are a beautiful couple who appear to be cool and living the life.
The story starts out with a concussed Cara who uncharacteristically tells the family the unfiltered truth at a dinner party. We than go back a few months and the lead up to this dinner is told.
The story is laugh out loud funny in most places but has its fair share of heartache too.
I have already recommended this book to a few people and I am sure that they will not be disappointed.
Thank you Netgalley and Penguin Random House Canada for the opportunity to review this fabulous book.

I want to start my review by saying that I have read all of Marian Keyes books and have never been disappointed. When I started this book, I was confused. There were a lot of characters and relationships to keep straight and I worried that I wouldn't follow.
I was pleasantly surprised that almost as soon as I worried I would dislike the book and be unable to follow along, it immediately clicked with me. Once again, Keyes has kept me engaged and wondering what would happen next! She tackles difficult issues with humor.
The story was both entertaining and relatable. 5 Stars!
I would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this book in exchange for my honest review.

This book was fantastic. I felt like I really knew the characters, and connected with them immediately. They were so well-developed. It was great to read about the different characters and the relationships the family all had with each other. I devoured this book, and can't wait to read it again to see if I pick up on anything else. What a delight that the characters were messy, conflicted, and full of pain and personality in their own times. Would definitely recommend.

Too many errors in the advanced digital edition. It was too distracting to be readable. I gave up. I hope it was good

I received a free e-galley from netgalley.com.