This roller coaster ride of a book had me feeling all the emotions. Alice is a suburban mother to a 12-year-old son and a 7-year-old daughter. She has a career as an interior designer and a husband who is a lawyer. She has regular coffee dates and walking sessions with girlfriends from when her oldest was in kindergarten. Life is pretty amazing. And then middle school happens and everything goes sideways.

All at once, Alice finds out that her daughter is not reading at grade level and really, they should be reading together every night as part of Adrian's homework, and Teddy has been bullying a boy and is being suspended for a pantsing incident that happened in front of the whole 7th grade. And her boss is kind of pushing her out of the spotlight at work. And her husband is hardly ever home because his work has him traveling for days at a time. And did I mention that her mother tells her that she put her first child up for adoption 43 years before and guess what? they are building a great relationship and wouldn't Alice love to be a big, happy family?

The story is told from many different points of view which is a great way to tell it when so much is happening to so many people. The chapters were pretty short and it was a fast read - great for those of us who maybe have to steal moments in order to read a book. I really enjoyed Ms. West's first book and this second novel doesn't disappoint.

My thanks to Berkeley Books and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Are We There Yet? is such a fun follow-up to West's debut novel, Minor Dramas and Other Catastrophes. Like her deubut, this book features suburban drama, misbehaving kids, and possibly worse-behaving parents. The book follows a set of suburban moms and their 7th graders as the kids find themselves in all kinds of trouble when they each get smart phones and social media accounts along with it. As the lives of each of the families unravel, the book explores themes of motherhood, family, friendship and growing up. It is written from several different points-of-view, and while most of the characters are deeply unlikeable, I still felt like I could understand and empathize with them. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and the glimpse it gave me into the family drama each of the women in this book had to deal with. I would recommend, and will definitely be keeping an eye out for West's work in the future!
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<b>The Short of It:</b>

This book originally came out in January 2019, way before our own pandemic hit and yet, the pandemic detailed in this story could have been taken right out of the headlines of today, minus the sleeping illness, of course.

<b>The Rest of It:</b>

The story takes place in the fictional town of Santa Lora, California. Santa Lora is a sleepy little college town (pun intended). Many of its residents work at the local university or at the very least know someone who goes there. In the dorms one day, Mei notices that her roommate is still sleeping although morning has come and gone. Her attempts to wake her are futile. The girl will not wake.

In another part of town, people are falling asleep where they are whether that is in the middle of a jog or walking the family dog. As more and more victims are discovered, the government is called in along with several medical professionals to determine what is actually happening. Is it psychological? Is the water contaminated?

As the story unfolds and the situation becomes more dire, Walker introduces us to the survivors as well as those who will eventually succumb to the sickness. What does it all mean? Why do some wake and others don’t and why are they different after surviving?

So much of this story resonates with me, given the pandemic that we are currently living with. The way the sickness spreads, the lack of understanding in the early days of the sickness, the conspiracy theories hinting at government control. The true winner here is the way Walker plays with dreams and memory. Some of the survivors remember vivid dreams that they had while sleeping. Some feel they are premonitions of the future, others believe they are memories from the past. What’s real anyway?

There are a lot of characters but they are all so distinct and their situations unique enough where I never felt confused over who was who or what was going on. It’s very well done. I cared enough about each of them to worry about their survival and that says a lot.

If you can tolerate a book about a pandemic, and I must say a sleeping sickness sounds a lot better than what we are dealing with now, then pick it up. Someone on FB said that when they read fiction now, they feel uncomfortable when reading about gatherings without masks and the like since they are so conditioned now to meet safely. Well, you won’t have that issue here because masks are the norm in this story.

For more reviews, visit my blog: <a href="http://bookchatter.net">Book Chatter</a>.

I loved this book! I found myself getting emotional about the characters. It’s clever, witty and relevant. You raise your children thinking every mistake you make happens to you only. This author gave me permission to let myself off the hook.. Nobody is perfect and the more you try to come off perfect the worse things are.We all have flaws and everything will be ok. I haven’t read the author’s first book but I plan to remedy that immediately

This story contains good drama and kept me entertained. It's an easy and quick read. I really liked the succinct chapters and unique, bizarre characters.

Let’s face it - raising a family can be challenging.  Raising a family in the era of social media is even more challenging.  Are We There Yet is the story of one woman who changes her perspective when life throws her several curveballs.

Alice Sullivan feels she has it all.  She has a great job as an architect and interior designer, is married to a successful man who she adores, and has two perfect children.  She displays her perfectly designed home and life on her business instagram page with pride.  She has great friends who meet regularly and discuss the local gossip.  That is, until the one day her perfect world starts to fall apart.  At a parent teacher interview that takes place while her husband is out of town, she’s told that her seven year old daughter is not reading at the level she needs to be at in order to move on to the next grade.  During this interview, she’s called by twelve year old son Teddy’s middle school regarding a situation that must attended to immediately.  All this on the day she was to meet her wealthy, new potential clients she’s hoping to impress.

Alice quickly determines that Teddy’s behaviour this day is actually part of a pattern she wasn’t aware of.  The school community, including several of Alice’s friends, soon begin to gossip about Teddy and question Alice’s parenting skills. Through a series of events surrounding Teddy and his peers’ access to social media, a perfect storm of events transpire which questions everything she thought she knew about Teddy.

Alice’s chaos does not stop there. As if life wasn’t stressful enough for Alice, her mother drops a bombshell that she’s been holding for more than thirty years.   This new development has Alice questioning her own relationship with her mother as she tries to determine her own new normal.

I absolutely loved this book.  The characters were well developed and the story insightful.  I found the book to be entertaining, and it flowed easily. I felt empathy for Alice and followed with interest how she would manage to reconcile all these stressors. The author highlights parenting in the age of smart phones and presents relevant information for all parents to consider.   I highly recommend this book to all that enjoy Women’s Fiction or Fiction involving Family Life.

Thanks to Netgalley and Berkley Publishing for the ARC of this book in exchange for the honest review provided here.

"Are We There Yet?" was an unique, lively, and fast-paced story. The multiple perspectives is something I look forward to in novels; I like seeing all POVs. I thought this was a very realistic story about what families experience, especially mothers. Kids can be so hard to raise and West shows the ins and outs of raising decent humans. 

Overall, I liked this novel, it was a relatable story many families can relate to.

This book is a hard one to classify. It read a bit like satire to me, but is classified as women’s fiction. 

Are We There Yet? tells the story of three mothers and their children. The three women have been close since their kids were in kindergarten, but that all falls apart when one of them starts bullying another student. 

At times, the drama was completely over the top, but it was also unfortunately relatable. Alice is struggling to balance life as a working mother. She thinks she has everything figured out, but life has a way of throwing curveballs. 

Mostly, this book made me appreciate the fact that my kid is still little! Teenagers are scary y’all! 

(Also- my kids name is Teddy and the bully in this book is also a Teddy. I don’t like that! Ha.) 

I’m going to give this one three stars! It was fine, but not my preferred genre.

Thanks to Berkley and Netgalley for the digital review copy.

Alice Sullivan is the type of wife and mom who portrays a picture perfect life, but is unraveling inside. I love reading about women like this; when they figure out that perfection is boring, it always makes for a great story. 

When Alice discovers her daughter struggles with schoolwork and her son is on the wrong path, she begins to question her parenting. When her mom reveals a serious secret she’s been keeping, all hells breaks loose.

I thought this was an interesting, fun, and fast-paced story. The multiple perspectives made this a super quick read, and I usually don’t like reading from the perspective of so many characters. It didn’t feel bogged down or confusing, so that’s a plus. Alice’s husband seemed like a “good guy” but he was so absent he might as well not have been in the book at all, although I know that’s the reality for many working moms who do it all, even with a spouse. While Alice was greatly concerned about the issues her kids were having, we really only see her deal with her son’s issues. Granted, his problems were much more serious and pressing than her daughter’s, but it was still frustrating to read about.

This was a solid story.

Alice is kicking ass and taking names. She is great at her job, and has two amazing kids. Until the day her son gets suspended for pantsing another student during the assembly, and she finds out her daughter is very behind in reading comprehension. In working to get to the bottom of Teddy’s issue, several parents realize their kids have finsta accounts they hide from them. Will Alice be able to keep herself together with everything going on?

I know I have said this before but I would die if I was a teenager right now. AIM was bad enough during my middle/high school years, if I had to deal with instagram and snapchat as a teen…I can’t even imagine.You also know I love some adults behaving badly. This book was more kids behaving badly and parents reacting badly to the bad things their kids did. It was so frustrating that Teddy seemed to get all the hate from everyone (not saying the things he did weren’t messed up) but why was Tane all good and never in trouble? He was just as bad. Much like Minor Dramas & Other Catastrophes, so many woman that care more about what people think of them than anything else. Overall I really enjoyed this one!

Alice lives a bit on a high horse with her perfect life. This all comes crashing down when her son displays bullying behavior at school. She doesn’t recognize her son and can’t get through to him. Will her friends be able to help?

I enjoyed reading this book, even though I was very uncomfortable at times. It was difficult reading what the teenagers were going through and feeling the frustration and helplessness of their parents. I absolutely loved that the narration changed from parents to children. It gave an amazing opportunity to hear the differing perspective. I don’t have teenagers yet, but I know we all wonder what go through their minds. The teenagers’ chapters gave a good insight into that through some difficult situations. There really was not any huge climax to the book, which I liked. I found it much more true to life with its slow simmer drama. There were many perspectives, which made for short chapters, and a very well rounded perspective. While enjoying this book, I also feel like I gained from it as well.

“In this day and age, it’s impossible to keep a secret”

Are We There Yet comes out 3/16.

Alice is cruising right along. Her career is going well, she has the perfect family, her husband is a successful attorney, she feels far superior to her friend whose son is very odd, she finds time to go for coffee occasionally, and then the bottom falls out. Her second grade daughter can't read and her middle school son is involved in a bullying scandal. All at once, her construct collapses.  Now, she is the parent who meets with teachers and administrators. She is the parent who needs to work with her child each night - when is she ever to find the time to do that? And what will the other moms in her social circle think of her? What does her husband think of her? Did he see any of this coming? And, most importantly, how does she help her children and herself get lives back on track?

Really enjoyed this book involving family drama, from kids getting into trouble to overprotective moms to adoption - well written and with intense characters, I would definitely look for Kathleen West's next book!  Thanks to NetGalley for an advanced copy.

I wasn’t sure how to categorize “Are We there Yet?” Is it Contemporary Women’s Fiction? Book Club Fiction? Or Humor or Satire? On Amazon, it is classified as “Friendship Fiction”, although I’m not sure you’d want to be in this group of friends!

Whatever you want to call it, this book is an interesting mixture of quirky characters, modern family life, social media problems, the joy of motherhood, and the challenges of family and friendships. As a mother myself, one of my favorite sayings is “You’re only a phone call away from disaster.” One morning, main character Alice is off to a good start- kisses her nice husband goodbye, drops the kids off at school, heads to her job as an architect/interior designer and then…the phone rings!!!… problems!!! and the messaging and social media angst erupts, too.

And the phone keeps on ringing for Alice. Not only are her kids in trouble at school, her mother has had a life epiphany and Alice’s boss is difficult. Her friends aren’t really there for her. And what does the crazy spray painting of male genitalia around her cozy suburb mean? Her two friends that she thought she could count on are dealing with their own issues and no one wants to admit to being a bad mother.

I ended up liking Alice as through it all, she seemed to have a good heart and she loved her family. There are plenty of other characters to get to know in this book, and many of the characters have their own POV chapter. Some of the kids in the book also have their own chapters, and at times this book seemed like it was more of a YA read.  All the characters and changing POVs make for a slow read. It’s not a book you will get lost in, but it is a book that will entertain you and will make you reflect a bit about your own life. How good a mother was I to my young kids I found myself asking.

Thanks to NetGalley and Berkley for an advance digital review copy. This is my honest review.

I liked this book.  As a parent, I could relate to some of the over the top drama.  I thought this was an entertaining book to read and I would recommend.  I look forward to reading more by Kathleen West!

This book tells the story of Alice and her friends who are going through trouble parenting with young teenagers. What do you do when a mother who thought she had her life together discovers that her children are having problems she never imagined? Alice will need to assess her priorities in relation to her friends , her mother and her career. 

As a mother I loved this book; it is well written and has wonderful characters.  It is easy to relate to Alice as a mother and woman with her strengths and shortcomings.  Motherhood is  so easily judged by other women, even with your closest friends. It was  a fantastic book, I highly recommend it.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

The slippery slope of parenting is a great topic for a novel and this title absolutely brings a smile to my face. Alice's anxiety with her kids and the concern about peer judgement strike a good chord. I can see this book being a popular pick for book clubs. Thank you for the ARC.

Could we make a new category for books like these? Perhaps competitive parenting fiction or making all the parenting mistakes fiction or trying to be friends with adult women fiction.........I greatly enjoyed this one. Thanks to netgalley for allowing me to read the ARC. I sped through this one. As a parent of a tween and a teen boy, this touched on so many issues that I find myself confronted with on a regular basis. Then there's the inevitable minefield of friendships with parents of your children's peers........oh, this is well written! I do with we had heard more from Nadia as a character, not just as a side note. I found hers to be a voice that I desperately wanted to read. 

I give this 4 stars.

3.5 stars
Though rather reminiscent of Bruce Holsinger’s The Gifted School, this novel was an enjoyable romp through the trials of 7th grade for both children and parents.

Three mothers and their children have been friends since kindergarten, but when Teddy Sullivan uses his popularity to start bullying another kid, it collapses a whole house of cards. His mother, Alice, tries to juggle dealing with this new side of Teddy along with her younger daughter’s reading difficulties, all while working with a major new client in her interior design career and her husband’s continued absence on work trips. As she tries, and fails to cope, she alienates her two close friends and her mother, Evelyn, who is going through her own family upheaval.

Composed of short chapters told from multiple perspectives, the story rattles along. I sympathized with Alice, thought Evelyn was a self-centered pill, and found the children’s lack of impulse control to be cringingly realistic. On the other hand, the warm and sunny resolution, though satisfying, felt a little pat.

This is yet another book in which it turns out that women can’t have it all on their own terms and that mothers can really both mess you up and be just what you need.

Thanks to Berkley and Netgalley for the digital review copy.

💚 Review time 💚 

This book was a quick read. I did enjoy it and would recommend. This review may have spoilers because there’s quite a bit I have to say about it, so let me start off by the synopsis of the book and then I will get into my thoughts so as not to have you read further should you not want spoilers.

Alice,Meredith, and Nadia are all friends with children in high school. They all seemingly have their life together when an incident begins to unravel Alice and Meredith. Alice soon realizes that her picture perfect life on the outside is not always what it is on the inside. Her child Teddy, does something to Meredith’s daughter, Sadie, which causes an upheaval between friends and the whole school. Sadie is in the middle and Meredith must come to understand that her child isn’t perfect. Alice’s mother also drops a bombshell on her. 

In the beginning I could not tell if this book was meant for adults or young adults. There is much co-mingling between both genres. The premise of the book is a great one and it definitely kept me interested enough to finish the book however there are a few things that I really struggled with reading this book. 

Spoilers ahead📚
Let me start off by saying that I had a really hard time liking Alice, Meredith, and Alice’s mother throughout this whole book. Let me start off with Alice’s mother Evelyn. Well the wall she plays is not a main part in the book it is definitely a post that plays into Alice’s lack of perfect life. I really felt like Evelyn was selfish and how she handled the revealing of her biological daughter, Julienne, whom she recently came in contact with, to her adopted daughter Alice. I felt with Evelyn being a therapist and she should have been more understanding of the time that it would take for Alice to get used to the idea that she had a sister, and one that was her mothers biological daughter. I do not feel that Evelyn was no chewing nor understanding enough in the situation and was actually quite selfish. Now having understood that whole excitement of knowing, meeting, and having a relationship with her biological daughter is of the upmost importance the way she handled the situation in my opinion was wrong. 

Meredith is another one that I had a really hard time putting myself in her shoes. Anyone who believes that their daughter is just perfect all the time my opinion is insane. You have to realize that your children are not perfect and in this but Meredith comes across as if she believes her daughter Sadie, can do no wrong and she’s just perfect little angel who is always going to be number one at everything she does. That is delusion and the way she handles the situation with her daughter almost as if she’s disgusted with her actually makes me cringe. As a mother of two girls myself, I know that they have done and will continue to do things that are not perfect and how do I handle the situation the way Meredith does in the book I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have a relationship with either one of them right now. So I had a hard time relating to her.

Alice is the one who is the actual main character in the book and he’s the one that I disliked the most. I understand having a busy life and I understand that sometimes your busy life pushes your children to the side. But when she receives a warning from another parent, Nadia, I’m not sure about you, but my first instinct is to immediately go to my child and find out what in the world is going on and why. I do realize that in the time that she received a warning and the time in which Teddy was called out of school that wasn’t really a place in there where she could have a discussion with her son. Then when she finds out that her child is having an issue at school to fight whether or not to help him and get some therapy for him is asinine to me. There should be absolutely no question, because once again no child is perfect. I understand the struggle between wanting a career, and raising children, but your children always, always come first and to see her struggle with it is hard for me because I don’t understand the mindset. That is not to say that other people will not understand it, there may be many who read this book that do. 

I do have to say that Nadia, is my absolute favorite person in the book. Even though she does not come up a whole lot, and it’s not really a main character in the book. She’s like that quiet friend that gently guides you through whatever it is that you are going through. She realizes the children are not perfect, and she realizes that you have to figure out what you need to figure out on your own while quietly supporting you from afar or from your side knowing that at some point you’ll figure it out.