I loved this book. I think this is a very special story about a special character. This is April’s coming of age story. Abandoned by her mother, neglected by her father, she hits the road with her guitar and sets out to find herself and create her music. April just wants to find a place where she belongs, with people that will love her and stay with her. There’s heartbreak and hurt, love and triumph. Author Allison Larkin has a real gem here. I urge you to grab this or add it to your book of the month order.

Fantastic read. While it is not plot driven it was a beautiful tale of how people influence our lives. I have recommended it to at least 10 people.

This wasn't for me. While I appreciated what the author was trying to portray, I felt like I've read/seen/heard this before. The era felt off to me, the character not very likable or easy to empathize with. And while her decisions, relationships and such felt very real - I think the portrayal of a teenage girl of the 90s was done well - I wasn't a fan of the book in general.

This book was so beautifully written and took you through all of the emotions. I cried and I laughed. There is also so much of this story that will resonate with others. If you're looking for a read that will stick with you, this is the one!

Sixteen year old April Sawicki is living by herself in a motorhome. Her father is off living with his girlfriend while leaving his daughter to completely fend for herself. After a terrible fight with her father, she decides to steal his car and leave for good. She finds herself in Ithaca, NY and manages to lie her way into a job, friendships and a relationship. In order to keep her new home she feels like she has to keep up the lies or suffer the consequences.

This is one of those novels where the main character made me so angry I wanted to throw the book across the room. It was hard to find her likable because of all the lying and overdramatized helplessness. The other characters were good and it was well written. If family drama is your genre, you may enjoy this more than me.

The People We Keep by Allison Larkin is a beautiful story. Full of hope, perseverance, grit, friendship and heartache, this story will bulldoze your heart and then reconstruct it. I was so incredibly invested in April's story from the very beginning; I wanted this young, neglected, hurt little girl to have everything. I wanted her to find love, be loved, have a hope and people she can call family, to belong, and, most of all, to pursue her passion. This stunning coming of age story will be one of the best books you read this year!

I am struggling with how to rate this book. I enjoyed the story of April, a 16 year old girl who has been given a lousy situation in life. Her mom left, her dad is fine with leaving her so he can go off with his new fiancee and no one cares for her except for the woman that runs the diner where April works when she can.

April makes some very questionable choices and isn't a character that you really like throughout most of the book. She is clearly affected by her upbringing (who wouldn't be?) and leaves people before they can leave her.

She's a guitar player and basically lives out of her car and plays gigs when she can. She crashes with random people or in campgrounds, etc. Along the way, she does connect with people and she seems to be very lucky to not have been harmed or taken advantage of because of the way she lives.

I wanted to keep reading and I liked how the end came full circle, but I didn't buy it. No spoilers, but everything ended too nice and perfect for the way the 300-plus pages before it read. The book takes place when she is 16 and then jumps ahead to when she is 19. This girl has to deal with a lot in that span and I get that, but I'd love an epilogue for another five or ten years down the road. She's just so young.

Also, I know this takes place in the 90s, but there is nothing that clings to that decade except the emergence of LGBTQ characters. With the music and the nomad ways, it seemed this could have been set in an earlier decade, but I guess that would have been harder to have gay/lesbian characters so accepted.

This was such a heartwarming, emotional novel - definitely one of my favorites of the year! The protagonist of the novel, April Sawicki, has grown up in a difficult situation; she's been abandoned by her mother, lives in a motorhome with her father (and his new girlfriend and her son), and is failing out of school - but after an argument with her father, decides to leave everything behind her. She moves from town to town, trying to get by on the bare minimum, trying to find her place in the world and the people who will stay in her life.

There's so much about April that I connected and empathized with, and each obstacle she encountered hit me personally - but it made her successes even more triumphant. Especially given the pandemic over the last few years, her ongoing search to find the people she can keep felt even more personal. Larkin's done an incredible job of crafting a character-driven story, and her writing hits home across multiple chapters and passages throughout the novel.

I loved reading this book, and I was cheering for April's happy ending throughout the book.

The People We Keep is the perfect light-hearted read that will make you appreciate the family you have and the family you have made.

Absolutely beautiful “coming-of-age” story that I won’t forget about for a long long time! You might love this book too if you love reading tender stories that have a surprising amount of depth. I felt uplifted at the end and I couldn’t stop rooting for April.

While the book was beautiful, I personally was not drawn to the characters or the story. I felt often like it was a diary as opposed to a narrative.

I felt very bad since this was an arc, but my honest feedback was it just didn't connect with me. I found myself but making time to read it like I do other books, but rather reading it when I was bored.

I am very grateful for having the opportunity to read this book and thank Netgalley, the publisher, and the author.

A story set in the 90s? A coffee shop/cafe as a center focus? And a big-city-turned-small-town character? Yes, yes, yes!

The People We Keep
Allison LarkinGallery BooksAugust 3, 2021
Reviewed by Lorraine Kleinwaks
August 31, 2021

Loneliness, homelessness, music, and friends (Upstate New York, and towns south to Florida; 1994-1997): Two quotes by beloved women sum up the complex, interconnected themes Allison Larkin delves into in her heart-hitting fourth contemporary novel, The People We Keep: Mother Theresa’s “The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved”; and Maya Angelou’s “Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.”

In the Biography of Loneliness by Britain’s Dr. Fay Bound Alberti, who studies the history of Matters of the Heart, she describes the psychological aspects of loneliness as an “emotional cluster” with “pinch points.” When we meet Larkin’s sixteen-year-old protagonist, April Sawicki, she’s at her tipping point. A last straw, breaking point from deep-rooted psychological pain and loneliness symbolized by living in a trailer park in a motorhome without a motor. More profoundly, abandoned by her mother at six, and her emotionally absent father who’s spent the last months living with another woman and her sickly child. All this happened in a small, remote upstate NY town in the Adirondack Mountains, west of the Fingers Lakes region.

There’s not much sweet going on in April’s life. No wonder she’s flunking high school. Given the alarming rise in teenage loneliness, and society in general, the novel also hits at an urgent time. The range of raw emotions exposed are universally-relatable, making this heartfelt tale for young and old.

We root for April because Larkin’s writing style cuts to the chase poignantly, making us feel her pain. It’s as if the author has embraced Ernest Hemingway’s advice to “write the best story you can and write it as straight as you can.” Larkin’s prose stands out for its straightforward way of conveying weighty emotions. She makes it look easy, but as Winston Churchill wrote, “if I had more time I would have written a shorter letter.” Writing simpler to get your message across powerfully is hard.

Noteworthy too is the ‘90s timeframe, ending when April is nineteen, when social media launched. Larkin is exploring loneliness before social media became a factor in the loneliness phenomenon, when teenagers, and too many of us, have lost the quality of interacting in person. April didn’t have any girlfriends to begin with. Small towns are gossipy, so her classmates didn’t want to be friends with her knowing how neglected she was and looked.

April’s most existentially valuable possession was her guitar, once her father’s. One day in a rage he smashed it into pieces – the final straw – setting into motion the novel’s searching-for-a-home journey: her coming-of-age, relationship journey (Parts I and II) and her musical, road-tripping one in Part II.

Fleeing meant literally becoming homeless and doing things she knew were wrong (like stealing her father’s getaway car and his cash lying around), feeling she had no other choice. Hers is a hard-knocks tale to no fault of her own.

Music is the one thing April can count on. She writes and sings melancholy songs, and plays and listens to oldies. The “sweetest song” she knows is Something in the Way She Moves. April loves this song because it makes her feel “people can fall in love and stay there.” In honor of April and one of the greatest singer-songwriters of all time, let James Taylor’s soothing voice give you a sense of her longing:


April’s playlist also includes Shelter from the Storm and Buckets of Rain (Bob Dylan), and Can’t Make You Love Me (Bonnie Raitt) – songs that reveal her sad story. Yet music offers hope.

April leaves behind a boyfriend who says he wants to marry her, but she believes that’s to get her to have sex. “Sex is one thing – just putting parts together. It’s an entirely different thing to exist together.” Existing together, meaning “what would last and wear too thin to keep.”

Leaving also means leaving Margo. She owns a diner where April’s been working since eleven. Margo loves and worries about her to the “core” – the child she never had, knowing just how much love she can handle. Margo used to date her father years ago, so she understands how messed up he is. Margo is the mother-figure April lost.

On the highway, April is headed to nowhere in particular. On the road for three hours, she spots the sign for Ithaca, exits remembering Margo’s boyfriend didn’t like the town peopled with hippies, a reason she might. Larkin went to Ithaca College, turning to other writing advice to write what you know.

Describing Ithaca in a “valley with a school on both the bordering hills,” refers to Ithaca College on one side, Cornell University another. Arriving, she does what other homeless people do if they even have a car: live in it. In her case, at a deserted campground until the creepy owner closes it down for the winter.

Waitressing is a transferable skill allowing April to quickly find a job, especially in a college town with a lively coffee shop scene. At Café Decadence, yes there’s hippies but also “grungy” and “straight-laced” types. Her funky boss with “extra spiky” hair, Carly, gives her a live-saving chance, earning it by coming to the rescue of a cute yet bumbling artist cook. On one of the lines that que up every morning, a twenty-seven-year-old guy, Adam, an architect and professor at Ithaca College, takes an unusual interest in her, pleasing and frightening her not trusting his motives. Until he tells her he too was once homeless and knows what it feels like not to be “noticed.” The push-and-pull tug of their relationship is a pattern seen throughout. Exceptionally kind to a girl desperately craving being touched and noticed, yet equally afraid of the danger of relaxing her guard.

April picks up a guitar again in Part II, when her music aspirations become real. Driving up and down the East Coast stopping in Florida and towns in-between, telling herself “driving will fix things. Changing directions. Gaining distance, getting to the kind of numb where miles fill in for feelings,” she finds work playing at bars mostly, hearing her “favorite sounds”: “the click of the strap buckle against the guitar, pop of the mic as I switch it on, the way the strings of the guitar vibrate ever so slightly when I rest it on my leg.” Crowds respond to the soulful songs she’s written, but to get them to first pay attention she sizes up the audience and plays songs they know, offering them and readers nostalgia. Willie Nelson’s On the Road Again seizes this stage in her life.

April’s musical path may bring some of her dreams closer, but she’s still squatting in stranger’s homes and having one-night stands, making friends and leaving them. When she lands in Asheville, North Carolina, she picks up Ithaca-like vibes so decides not to run away so fast. Here she’s tested mightily.

Will she stay or flee?

April's naivete in this book was refreshing. She's from a small town and only 16 when the novel starts, and it's nice to read a teen character who doesn't know everything. Author Allison Larkin does an excellent job of keeping April grounded; she has a complicated relationship with her father, and the push and pull of her emotions feel real. Almost any teen or young adult could relate.

The book overall, however, has a fairly static trajectory. April goes three pivotal years of her life meeting various people and forming friendships and romantic relationships. At every location she visits, she's looking for both of those things. She doesn't always get them, but when she does those isolated incidents are sweet. Taken as a whole, though, the book just doesn't have much forward momentum. The events that are supposed to be dramatic don't really come across as such. Because April is more or less on the same emotional plane from start to finish, the big moments all actually feel the same. Readers won't find themselves worrying for her or angry at her circumstances or anything else. The book, in that regard, feels more like literary fiction.

The ending, too, is a little confusing and a touch melodramatic. Readers might want to check this one out for how music can mean a lot to a character. Overall, though, it's just okay.

I read this one with my book club and loved it. I love "historical" fiction set in the 80's since that was when I was growing up. I loved how the main character created a family of misfits when her bio family failed her. She learned so many lessons along her path as most of us do. This was the first Allison Larkin book that I have ever read and I will definitely pick up her next one. Highly recommend.

A beautiful cover for a beautiful book! I imagine that The People We Keep by Allison Larkin will be in my top ten books for 2021. It's an engrossing book about chosen family and resiliency that I can imagine being discussed in many book clubs.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me. All thoughts are my own.

What I loved:
✨April is 16 when we meet her, yet she’s dealt with life in a way that some adults never do. She’s living on her own, struggling to get by, and, while I’ve never been in that kind of need, I feel like people will be able to relate to her tenacity.
✨The writing brings April to life. Allison Larkin has a gift for creating characters that are real and vulnerable and irritating and stubborn and kind and worthy and original. Every time I finish a book by Allison Larkin I have to pause before starting something new. Throughout the day today different parts of the book would come back to me and this doesn’t happen to me often. I have a hole to fill now that these characters are gone.

What I didn’t love:
✨I would have loved more of Ethan’s character. I loved that relationship dynamic. As much as these people saved April, she also saved them, especially Ethan. (I’m literally just realizing this now as I’m writing the review and I finished the book 14 hours ago. See what I mean about the book coming back to me?)

initial thoughts: beautiful. April’s story is unforgettable and a story of loss, love, abandonment, acceptance, finding yourself, and your chosen family.

while I had more than a few issues with April and choices she made, I feel I understand why she made these decisions, and how her past formed her into who she is.

such a moving story and one I won’t forget for a long time.

a huge thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC.

This book was absolutely beautiful. What a poignant take on growing up, and the different roads we have to take to get where we belong. My favorite read of 2021!

I received a free ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was a great read. I cried several times. The author had a great writing style and really made you feel what the characters were going through. Lots of ups and downs. It was set in the 90s so I appreciated some of the references to that time period.

4.5