Hope increases as grief lessens with time and healing.

What I loved most about this book is how a normal mother can have a huge positive impact on those around her. This is a story about grief and healing. About how we can grow and become stronger people when life is hard. We learn all about Annie’s life as each of her loved ones reflect on their relationship with her.

This is a book about healing after a mother/wife/friend/sister/nursing home employee (Annie) dies suddenly. The story was harder for me to read because children lost their mother and she was an awesome mother. It is about a father that is in no way prepared to be both mother and father to his children. Annie’s best friend depends on her for so much support. For me this book was sad but had a happy ending filled with hope.

Quindlen is one of my favorite authors; even when I don't love one of her books, I still find plenty to like and think about it. So when I find that she's written a new book, I jump at the chance to read it. Without even looking to see what it's about. And, clearly, without paying much attention to the title. So it came as a surprise to me when Annie drops to the kitchen floor, dead of an aneurysm. I suppose I thought that this would be a family story, which it most certainly is. But it is primarily a book about grief and loss and how each person handles both in their own way and in their own time.

Quindlen is a master of making big themes feel intimate, personal, and real.
"Annie Brown died right before dinner. The mashed potatoes were still in the pot on the stove, the dented pot with the loose handle, but the meatloaf and the peas were already on the table. Two of the children were in their usual seats. Jamie tried to pick a piece of bacon off the top of the meatloaf, and Ali elbowed him."
It turns out that Annie was everyone's anchor, as women so often are. Without his anchor, Bill looks to other people, who are all too willing to step up, to help him survive. Ali turns to her only real friend, only to find that her friend doesn't have the capacity to help. Ant rebels. Annemarie finds she doesn't know how to fight her addiction without Annie holding her accountable. Fortunately, there are people who offer real solace and reasons to fight hard to make a new life, while still honoring the person they lost.

For a short novel, Quindlen has packed a lot into this one. Not only are we dealing with death, grief, loss, parenting, marriage, and friendship, Quindlen is also addressing mental health, sexual assault, addiction, aging, and secrets. In lesser hands, it would be too much. It might be more here than Quindlen needed to include here; but, because she handles it all so well, it mostly worked for me. And I was so wrapped up in the characters, so invested in their finding their way to peace, that I was willing to overlook anything that might have been hard to forgive in a lesser work. I know there will be people who are not happy with the ending; but I was fine with it because I so badly wanted to this family to pull together and find a way forward.

Yet another beautiful, emotional and honest story from an author who digs deep into the human experience. Annie is making dinner for her family one moment and gone the next. She was the center of her family and when an aneurysm bursts, everyone's world comes to a halt. How will they all move forward without her? She and Bill were together forever or as long as forever can be for a forty year old and truly wanted to grow old together. He is bereft and while all he wants to do is mourn, he has to figure out how to be a single parent to his grieving children. We join them on their emotional and bumpy road to learning how to live without Annie. Through their painful times while all having to grow up too fast, deal with things children shouldn’t have to, pressures to keep it all together and all that these deep changes bring while trying to find their equilibrium, new normal. This goes on my list of the best books of the year.

After Annie is a book about a mother who dies and the effects it has on the people she loved in her life. Anna Quindlen did a great job of developing the characters who are easy to relate to. This book deals with grief and loss very well while also giving hope to the people left behind.

This book is a masterpiece that earns every one of its five stars. Quindlen's poignant storytelling delves deep into the lives of Annie Brown's family and closest friend as they grapple with the sudden loss of the woman who held their world together. Through the perspectives of Annie's husband, best friend, and daughter Ali, Quindlen expertly navigates themes of grief, resilience, and the enduring power of love. Despite the heavy topics, Quindlen's prose is both tender and raw, drawing readers into a narrative that feels achingly real. The simplicity of the story is where its beauty lies, offering a poignant reminder of the messy complexities of life and the strength found in human connection. This book is a must-read for anyone seeking a heartfelt exploration of family, grief, and the resilience of the human spirit. Thanks to net galley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

"Annie Brown died right before dinner."

It's so terribly hard to lose a loved one when we see it coming, when we expect it...but to have it happen totally out of the blue is especially devastating.

Annie Brown has an aneurysm and dies as she's putting dinner on the table. She leaves her husband Bill, her 13 year old daughter Ali and three sons, 11, 8 and 6 to pick up the pieces.

The one who ends up picking up most of the pieces, though, is Ali. Father Bill goes off the rails and leaves most of the responsibility of the household on Ali's young shoulders.

The story follows the members of the family over the following year, along with the Mom's best friend and a toxic mother-in-law thrown in.

There were MANY moments that made me want to throttle characters and caused my blood pressure to rise. I really felt sorry for Ali through most of the story.

Oh well, I guess a good story makes you feel and author Quindlen books do tend to do that.

I received this Digital Review Copy from Random House through Net Galley in the hopes that I would read it and leave an unbiased review. This is that review.

Thanks to NetGalley for the free advance copy of After Annie by Anna Quindlen in exchange for an honest review.

It’s always a treat when Quindlen writes a new book, and After Annie is my new favorite. When 37-year-old nursing home aide and mother of four Annie Brown dies suddenly, the children, her husband, and her best friend have to come to grips with the tragedy and find a way to go on. With a beginning like that you’d think the novel would be a total downer, but it’s not. As usual, the author’s character development is spot on, and her parsing of the characters’ relationships with Annie and with each other are what gives the book its heart. I think my favorite character was 12-year-old Ali, the eldest of the bunch, who suddenly must become a substitute mother overnight to her three younger brothers while navigating the trials and tribulations of middle school. A close second is best friend Annemarie, who has her own problems that she now must face without Annie to pick her up when she falls down. I loved this book and will be thinking about it for a long time. Five huge stars.

When a book starts with a mom of four young kids suddenly dropping dead on the kitchen floor, you know it’s going to be a sad one.
Each family member is left to deal with the huge hole that Annie’s death leaves in their own lives, and must figure out how to continue on as a family unit without its center.
This was indeed somber, but not depressing. The Brown family members that are left behind are likable, sympathetic characters that you are definitely rooting for.
Thanks to #netgalley and #randomhouse for this #arc of #afterannie by #annaquindlen in exchange for an honest review.

After Annie will break your heart, tug at your soul and put it all back together again-more than once. When young mom Annie dies suddenly, her husband Bill and four children are left to figure out life after her death. Ali, the oldest, tries to take care of her young brothers and dad while facing challenges she never expected. Bill is lost and bereft without Annie, and while her best friend tries to help as much as possible, she too is dealing with a massive amount of grief and her own issues that resurface. Over the first year without Annie, everyone is tested in different ways but they draw on the strength from Annie herself to move forward. Anna Quindlen is a master storyteller and this book, though heartbreaking at times, illustrates how we move through adversity.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest feedback.

A tender, tragic story about the sudden death of Annie, a wife/mother/friend/sister. There’s the business to deal with after a death - the announcing, arrangements (the immediate things) and the aftermath of starting the grieving process. I thought this was portrayed very well through the eyes of the daughter. Maybe too many plot points going on which for me was hard to stay focussed, but overall a lovely story.

I really love Quindlen's writing. It's not overly flowery, but there's a lot of depth and beauty to it. This book is about the aftermath of a young woman's death. There are POVs from her husband, her daughter, and her best friend. I thought this was a really smart way of exploring grief from different perspectives. However, there were two aspects that kept this from being a 5-star read for me, and they're actually kind of minor (but definitely things that stuck out and shifted my opinion of the book).

First, the book doesn't say a specific year that it's set, but there's new technology that's used throughout so it seems like it's set now. The main characters are all in their late 30s, so they'd be my age. The confusing part is that they all have old-fashioned names, and the music they name as songs they listened to were all songs from the 1970s (not the 1990s or 2000s like would be appropriate for that age group). As a millennial, I kept getting taken out of the story when these things caught my attention.

<spoiler> Secondly, I HATE when characters start relationships with their therapists (or their kids' therapists). I find this insanely unethical, and it bugs me when this happens but isn't really addressed in a story.

Overall, I loved spending time with these characters, even though this was a heartbreaking book. I'll definitely read more of Quindlen's stuff in the future - just hope those little details don't drive me as crazy as they did in this one.

this was a very emotional book for me to read since I recently lost my mother but Quindlen did a nice job with all the emotions everyone was going through. I felt I could relate to a lot of what was going on.

After Annie by Anna Quidlen is such a beautiful story, about grief and the love that sometimes comes along with grief. The love that can turn grief into a gift. Anna Quindlen has long been on of my favorite authors. This book is a keeper.

After Annie is a story of loss and the profound effect it has on those left behind. When Annie Brown dies suddenly, unexpectedly, and young, those she leaves behind struggle to make sense of the world without her. Told from the perspective of her children, husband, and best friend, the reader comes to know the many facets of Annie’s life and personality, the most significant of which was her capacity to love .

Anna Quindlen has been a favorite of mine for years and I am happy to say I really enjoyed this book as much as the others. While it was sad and the overall theme can feel a bit down- looking at the bigger message of the power of love, connection and finding the light in a very drak place is where is shined. Incredibly moving but so beautiful. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

"After Annie" explores how the loss of one person can shape the lives of those who loved them.

When Annie Brown dies suddenly, in front of her husband and four young children, the space she leaves behind seems almost too large to fill, not just for her family, but also for her long-time best friend, Annemarie.

The story follows primarily Annie's husband, Bill, their oldest daughter, teenager Ali, and Annemarie as they grieve her loss and try to come to terms with what life looks like without her. Each has their own way of handling things, some healthier than others. But it's a shame that the teenager has to be the healthiest of them all.

Overall, I found this to be a bit of a downer, focusing on all the negative ways someone can process grief instead of more of the positive ways. It was hard watching everyone's lives fall apart until people finally got their acts together a year later. And while it does end on a more positive note, I can't say it was heartwarming or fulfilling in any way... Instead, most of the book is bleak and painfilled, with people behaving badly.

Thank you to Anna Quindlen, Random House and NetGalley for an advance review copy.

Such a lovely quiet book. A young mother suddenly collapses in her home, and her family is left in the aftermath. It was thoughtful, troubling, and ultimately hopeful. What an exceptional person this Annie had been. It’s touching, with a lot of depth from difficult circumstances. So glad I read it!

After Annie is a moving, beautiful portrait of a family trying to heal from a sudden, unthinkable loss. Anyone who has ever grieved a love one deeply will find themselves reflected wisely and gently within these pages, while also finding compassion for those whose experiences and reactions differ from our own. After hearing the author speak in person onstage about the gestation of this story and how it evolved, I appreciated it even more. Anna Quindlen deserves to be a mainstay on any thoughtful reader's shelf.

Anna Quindlen has a way of making her characters unforgettable - by the middle of the book, the reader feels as if they are close personal friends telling their story over a cup of coffee or a beer. I grew up outside of Philadelphia, in South Jersey and I can hear that local accent when her characters speak. Quindlen takes ordinary situations and personalities and makes something both extraordinary and relatable. I wanted to hug Annie's preteen daughter and tell her she was doing a great job, shouldering more responsibility than she should have to, that everything would be alright. I also felt for Annie's husband, who is a well developed, 3 dimensional character, who is torn in two directions, unlike some womens fiction, where the male characters are either jerks, or just someone in the background. This book is written with so much emotion, yet it does not become maudlin. It is a book to get lost in and cry or cheer for the characters as they make their way through grief and grow stronger in the end, powered by Annie's undying love.

2.5 stars.

After Annie tells the story of three of the most important people to the titular character, Annie Brown, following her sudden death. Annie's husband Bill, their four children, and her best friend Annemarie, are left to grapple with the void left by her absence. Along with her struggle to move forward in a life without her mother at age thirteen, Annie's daughter, Ali, steps into the combination role of oldest sibling and caregiver within the household. Quindlen explores what the first year following Annie's death looks like for this trio of loved ones.

While I thought some of the dynamics explored between the characters and the flashbacks of Annie were thoughtful and heartfelt, this novel left a lot of unexplored emotions on the table. The distance between the narrative voice and the reader was far too removed for my tastes, preferring a deeper and more poignant excavation of grief. I wanted something far more personal and far more introspective, but instead I only got a vague sense of Annie herself and who she was to these three people in her life.

One of the problems that permeated the novel for me was this strange lack of anchoring on the timeline, which was one of the ways that kept me from really connecting. Annie, Bill, and Annemarie (along with the other adults) felt of another time period, like they were adults from a generation or two before mine, especially with as disconnected as they were in the wake of Annie's death. Bill, in particular, seemed completely devoid of any idea at all of how to communicate properly with his kids.

Additionally, there was an odd choice made for a classmate of Ali's — something that's both revealed and left unresolved in the end — that seems to be there for no particular reason other than a nodding acknowledgment of "some things just can't be fixed."

This one just never pulled me in, and I felt like an outsider the whole time.