What to say about The Faculty Lounge? Jennifer Mathieu is clearly a veteran teacher-turned author.
Every. Single. Chapter. They rang true. Some a bit too close to my own experiences to be honest.

Jennifer does more than tell a tale of disgruntled teachers - she builds an entire community around an event, a sudden death. Using flashbacks and linked stories we meet the multitude of staff that make up a high school that you are not soon to forget.

Each chapter focuses on one of the staff and Mathieu skillfully peels back the protective layers to reveal the character's secret hopes and past experiences. Each chapter is truly a work of art !

The chapters link together providing a story of a community. The school that she has created is much like the one your children attend (or maybe you even work there!) This story -it's insightful, it's beautiful, it's sad and it's hopeful. It's a true work of art for all of the teachers, the parents and the students out there!

The Faculty Lounge by Jennifer Matthieu coming out July 23 provides a look into the lives of teachers, administrators, and staff who work at Baldwin High School in Houston, Texas. Basically a series of short stories told over a school year, this contemporary fiction illustrates the problems in public schools today: from book banning to high stakes, poorly written standardized tests to practice lockdowns to lack of administrative support from the Central Office to helicopter parents to overworked and underpaid teachers.

The school year starts with the story of a beloved retired teacher who has returned to Baldwin to substitute teach only to pass away while stretched out on the couch in the faculty lounge. When Principal Kendricks complies with Mr. Lehrer’s request to have his ashes spread in the courtyard of the school per his will, he comes under fire when the impromptu scattering is witnessed by some busybody parents, one of whom gets covered with ash when the wind blows. The staff taking part in the ceremony soon find themselves in mandated trauma counseling. The principal will be fighting to keep his job before the year is over.

The youngest teacher on campus starts her year by finding Mr. Lehrer’s body. An English teacher recalls it was Mr. Lehrer who offered her encouragement in her first year of teaching, always said to be the hardest year. She tells the younger teacher, “There are some days when all you can do is just make it until the last bell.”

A veteran English teacher misfires an email response to a parent challenging his use of a book that she accuses of being an example of Critical Race Theory, with the end result that the book is pulled from all the English classes, and the teacher has a reprimand added to his permanent record. The school nurse deals with all sorts of maladies but her heart goes out to those who suspect pregnancy, and to that end, she buys test kits with her own money for them.

A biology teacher questions his career choice, especially when he is trapped in the book room when an unscheduled lockdown is issued. An assistant principal finds herself coping with the death of her spouse by self-medicating to deal with all the problems that pop up in each school day. These are just a few of the stories in the course of a school year at Baldwin High School.

Jennifer Matthieu is a high school English teacher and writer. Her young adult novel Moxie was adapted into a Netflix film directed by Amy Poehler. The Faculty Lounge is her first adult novel. She lives in Texas with her family.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting April 21, 2024.

I would like to thank Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Random House, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

Non-teachers will laugh at the absurdity of some of the situations in The Faculty Lounge. Meanwhile, teachers will laugh because they know how true the absurdity is. Thank you Jennifer Mathieu for reminding readers that educators are humans who dedicate their lives to teaching kids while navigating their own often tumultuous lives. I will be recommending to all my friends, especially my teacher friends!

Thank you @netgalley for the ARC.

This was a funny, real, deeply-felt and carefully-detailed novel of life in a school. Reading about the intersecting characters' lives, their dramas and their loves and their resentments, and the way the pot boils over after one miscalculated incident—it was all so true to life in a funny, exaggerated, delightful way. The teacher book I've been needing in my life!

5 stars from me!

I was a teacher for 32 years, and The Faculty Lounge by Jennifer Mathieu is spot on. I found myself laughing throughout the book. It starts with an older man who is found dead on the couch, in the teacher's lounge, while he is subbing. From everything from parent emails, to professional development, to school romances, The Faculty Lounge brings to light what staff members at a school go through each day. The best part, though, is it is told in a humorous way showing how different staff members reacted to different situations. It isn't a whiny book about these situations, which made me like it even more.

If you are an administrator, office staff, nurse, counselor, custodian, or teacher, you are going to relate to this book. You are going to want to tell your colleagues about this book. On top of that, you are going to think of this book when something happens at school that makes you laugh. I kept picturing different people that I have worked with as the different characters are introduced.

Please, please....if you know me, please don't throw my ashes in the front yard of my school when I die.

Thank you to Dutton and Jennifer Mathieu for sharing this book with me. This is my honest opinion. Now I can't wait for my friends to read it, so we can talk about which of our colleagues they pictured when they read the book.

As a former elementary school librarian, this book rang so true! A teacher is found deceased in the faculty lounge and it sets off a chain of events that affect many of the teachers and staff at the school. The author must have worked in a. School, or at least done an amazing amount of research for it, because I have met, in some form, each one of the main characters. I love how each character has a layered backstory. This was a book that I loved through the last page. I will be looking for more from this author.

I’m so happy I read this book. Firstly, I didn’t initially recognize the author’s name, but I loved her YA book, Moxie. Matthieu has a super fresh voice, and is able to deliver heavy messages with a light hand. She never seems preachy, but her books are thought provoking and meaningful. This seems to be one of her only adult books, and it was one of my favorites of the year. As someone who works in a library, I related to the characters so well- under pressure, under appreciated, surrounded by various societal challenges… I admired so many of the characters and the way they persevered through difficult circumstances and found joy amidst the difficulties of their jobs… it was tremendously uplifting, and renewed my faith in the educational system. If educators like these are real, we will all be ok. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the e-arc.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who has ever been a teacher. Having been in the classroom myself for twenty five years, I recognized people she described. I loved that the story was told through one school year and through different perspectives.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for my honest feedback.

Astute slice of life novel examining the motivations or lacks thereof of teachers and humans in the microcosm of a high school in the US. The book changes perspective from chapter to chapter, but deftly maintains the story arc. Beautifully written, characters are flawed but loveable.

Solid 4⭐️ I think anyone who teaches, especially high school teachers, or is in the public education sector should read this! It was so funny and so real. I loved how modern it was. There was so much diversity in these characters and so much life in them as well. I loved how there was a variety of experience, and ages, and background, and relations. I love how, for me, it reminded me how human our teachers/staff are. I feel like, especially being a younger person, I can sometimes forget teachers/professors, administrators, staff have hobbies, have human issues, experience grief, have personal interests, etc. I thought this book beautifully captured the humanness in the teaching and education realm. With the characters, also, I appreciated that we saw some who were very passionate about their field and others who weren’t quite as enthusiastic. I’m glad it wasn’t portrayed that every teacher is *super amazing*, *loves kids* because, although that can be true, it isn’t true for every single educator. Something else I enjoyed was how this book examined, a little, how education has changed. Education 30 years ago does not look the same as it does today, and we get to see how some of these more veteran staff members handle that and the issues that come with that. A few issues that I had with this read was that I struggled following the timeline occasionally. It was chronological, but it wasn’t evenly divided throughout the school year, if that makes sense. I also feel like there are sensitive topics in this book that should be taken into consideration for certain readers. Overall, I enjoyed this read! I laughed, I cried, I had a good time! Top-notch characters with such detailed and individual experiences!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher, Penguin Group Dutton, for this raw and magnetic ARC!

Good book with an okay story. I liked the main character and the book as a whole was good. Wish it had moved a bit faster in the story.

A cozy book with each chapter focusing on a different faculty member. Not too deep, but lots of feel good vibes here.

Absolutely loved this book! As an educator myself I felt as if I knew these characters. This book made me smile and cry. It will stay with me for a while. I will definitely recommend it to many friends.

As a former teacher, this book rang true on so many levels! From the interpersonal relationships to understanding the sometimes absurd circumstances teachers find themselves in, this book covers it all. I found myself laughing out loud in spots, no doubt having experienced similar situations myself. I liked the format, in that we got to learn more about a different employee in every chapter. From the school counselor to the elderly substitute teacher, each person played an integral part in building the school's history.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

Admittedly, I went into this one slightly skeptical. I've read a lot of books set in schools that make me wonder if the author has ever actually set foot in a school (especially YA novels set in high schools. No teenager talks like that. And there's not nearly that much drama.) I was refreshingly surprised.

Set in a present day Texas high school, The Faculty Lounge tells the story of a year in life of the Baldwin High School staff. Pretty much every event could have been pulled from my 14 years of teaching (except - thankfully - for the dead sub in the teacher's lounge). The characters felt real, painting teachers as we truly are: not martyrs, not saints - just people doing our best to impact the next generation. I saw pieces of myself in almost every character: the new teacher, optimistic and confused; the veterans who are just over all the nonsense; the counselor struggling with personal loss and simply trying to make it through the day; the teacher who's questioning if this is even what they want.

If anyone wants a realistic look into education in 2024, this is a good place to start. The vignettes provide insight into a variety of perspectives in modern education. What it lacks in plot it makes up for in character.

This read more as a series of short-stories than a well-rounded novel. Nevertheless, I did like the school setting and the concept: a retired teacher who has come back to substitute teach dies on the faculty lounge couch during a break. The other teachers and staff share their stories of how this old teacher was part of their own life and career.

This was such a sweet book! I loved the characters, and their love story. The dialogue was realistic and enjoyable.

Currently get my M.Ed and this book just felt so warm. I loved reading about all of the teachers and seeing how they interact because it felt genuine. This is definitely a slim plot book, but I enjoyed that. I felt immersed in each chapter because it read like a mini biography of each teacher and their relationship with the school. Also, I'm not typically a fan of emails or texts being use in a book, but Mathieu made good use of them and it added to the plot. The way they were formatted was easy to follow (even on a Kindle).

As a current high school teacher who is trying to figure out whether this is a sustainable career to stay in for the next 25 years, this book hit a LOT of nails on the head. It made me both realize the impact we have on a day to day basis but also further reaffirmed by current qualms about how much of our lives we are devoting to others and how under-appreciated that is. Despite this being in Texas and me in Canada, there are so many true parallels and I felt like I could place my own colleagues working the staff list within the book.

This was a cool book! I would describe it as vignettes maybe? Each chapter focuses on a different staff member of the school and while different characters show up/are mentioned in other chapters, each is sort of a stand-alone. It really captured what it's like to work in a school. I'm not sure if this book will find wide appeal outside of educators though.