The story is set in 2014, recent enough so that I don’t consider this historical fiction. April, May, June and July (three sisters and a brother) are no longer close. Ten years ago their father was kidnapped in the middle east. The family paid a ransom but he was never released. They have internalized and dealt with their fathers disappearance separately. The family is spending time together while preparing for June’s (Juniper) upcoming wedding. Then April, the oldest, thinks she sees her father in Dubrovnik, when she is traveling abroad. It has them reaching out to the government suits and others for more information.

I liked how individual the reactions are to the father's failure to return from contract work. While they all pull away from each other, there are struggles with depression, alcohol, unfaithfulness and more. Trying to seek answers brings the four back together with a common cause. Feelings about the past are shared or exposed. I did like that two of the siblings are LGBTQIA and that is not an issue in the family.

A good part of the book talks about happenings and players at the time in the middle, east especially Iraq. I’m sure it was factually accurate but that part was of less interest to me. I was most invested in June’s story but I didn’t really cheer for any of the characters. I think when I read family drama books I want to know ultimately they are better than where they started. I think in this case they are only sort of better for seeking answers.

A thought-provoking read from Alison B. Hart, whose last novel THE WORK WIFE I devoured. Four estranged siblings struggling with a variety of secret problems are brought together again first by an impending family wedding, then by the possible emergence of their long-disappeared father. College soccer, extramarital affairs, middle eastern politics, and struggles with alcohol are all handled sensitively as three sisters and their brother struggle to find a new definition of both internal and family peace.

April, May, June, and July Barber haven’t been close since their Dad’s disappearance in the early 2000s when he took a contract placement in Iraq, their lives and grief taking them separate ways. Ten years later there are new leads in their Dad’s case and the siblings find themselves working together to learn about their father’s kidnapping and whether or not he is alive.

What I liked:
- Hart succeeded in showing how grief is so individual. Though all four siblings suffered the disappearance of their father, each of them experienced that grief in their own way. I enjoyed learning about each sibling, how they grew apart and then came back together.

- I don’t know if I would call this historical fiction because the early 2000s seem too recent, but I though Hart did a great job giving context of the political climate and war happening in the Middle East at this time. It was informative without taking up too much of the story.

- The tension around Frank’s disappearance, new clues, and the siblings’ trip to Iraqi Kurdistan to find out the truth. Sometimes this was more captivating than the siblings’ storylines.

Honestly, there wasn’t anything that I didn’t like. Add this one to your TBR, it comes out May 2024.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing | Graydon House who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Sisters April, May, June and July are together for the first time after a long stint away. They are each filled with their own problems and wants. Add a missing father to the mix that April thinks she saw and the plot gets dicier. This was an easy read but I did find the characters very one dimensional which led to them falling flat.

“April May June July,” by Alison B. Hart

Estranged siblings are all going to the same wedding. They haven’t seen each other in years. Before the wedding April sees their father, who went missing a decade ago, making it even more complicated.

I unfortunately didn’t really like this book very much. I felt like I wasn’t given enough time or backstory or something to actually like most of the characters, so I didn’t care when all the bad things were happening to them. I just don’t think the characters were very likeable at all. 2 out of 5 stars, not for me.

I loved the characters and the sibling dynamic. I'll admit the larger global political aspect of this book was really lost on me and I felt myself skimming sections.

It's impossible to read Alison B. Hart's April May June July and not think of what Tolstoy wrote about unhappy families: they are all unhappy in their own ways. In Hart's beautifully crafted novel, the "Barber sadness" is a particular unhappiness born in tragedy: the disappearance of patriarch Frank Barber after he and three Iraqi associates were kidnapped in Iraq, where he worked as a civilian contractor.

Ten years after the kidnapping, "the length of his absence was its own sort of answer to the question any news?" And yet his four children--April, May, June, and July--are unable to put aside hope that he may someday reappear, a hope that soaks into their unhappiness as adults, "the way hope felt indistinguishable from despair." April throws herself into work and raising her children, but with a side of extramarital affairs. May disappears into herself, pulling away from friends and family alike. June remakes herself as Juniper, a star soccer player and rising coach, but struggles with alcohol. And July, the youngest and only son, tries to find his footing in college and his unrequited feelings for his roommate.

When the four estranged siblings are thrown back together in a series of celebratory events leading up to Juniper's wedding, the "contrails of tragedy" follow them into every encounter. And when April thinks she spots her father on a vacation in Dubrovnik, of all places, every hope--for Frank's life, yes, but even just for answers to the questions surrounding his disappearance--comes rushing back to the surface of their lives.

In her acknowledgements, Hart (The Work Wife) notes that a kernel of this novel came from her desire to understand more about the recent history of Iraq, "a place that's been in the headlines throughout my life... but that I felt I understood only opaquely." This weaves through the threads of the Barber siblings' lives, each indelibly shaped by the politics of the United States' involvement in Iraq, despite living thousands of miles away. Hart invites readers to grapple with an understanding of the larger geopolitical forces at play ("the realization that your life of relative safety was purchased through violence"), even as the Barber siblings deal with their own individual grief, hope, and desperate search for answers. April May June July is part family saga, part missing persons case, part political thriller; a captivating and important novel that reveals just how personal the political is--and vice versa. --Kerry McHugh, freelance writer

Shelf Talker: April May June July is part family saga, part missing persons case, part political thriller, a captivating and important novel revealing just how personal the political is--and vice versa.

April, May, June, and July Barber are siblings. They stopped being a close family 10-yearsago when their father was kidnapped. Each sibling is having problems in this book and each one has coped a different way.
I wanted to read the book; because of finding out what happened to their father. April thinks she sees him alive while vacation overseas. She tells her siblings and they each have their own opinion on the sighting.
I can't say I really enjoyed this book since it involves a lot of back and froths between the different siblings' lives. They each must face their past mistakes and take on the future.
The author does tell the story about the father and what happened to him at his kidnapping and time afterwards.

Special thanks to Harlequin Trade Publishing and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I wanted to love this book, but had such a hard time reading it. The characters fell flat and seemed more like caricatures than fleshed out. I thought there would be more family drama, but a lot of this book had to do with things that were not included in the premise and changed the feel of the book.

I unfortunately didn’t enjoy this book, and after reading a third of it, I decided to stop. I really thought it was perfect for me - queerness! Family drama! Intrigue! But it fell flat. There were so many characters to get to know and so many moving pieces, and when I didn’t feel settled in by 1/3 in, I didn’t think I could keep going. Part of the issue is that I couldn’t get invested in the siblings’ lives because we didn’t get to know them enough to care, and what we did learn was largely not great. That said, I do think I would give this book another shot in audiobook format!

This book was really challenging to get into for me. The characters very flat feeling and it was as if the author pulled out every obscure fifty cent word they knew and used it in the novel. It was not at all like the premise / blurb.

April May June July by Alison B. Hart was such a beautifully heartbreaking story. The story begins with Aprils perspective as she tells the reader about her improper thoughts at work and how she’s been cheating on her husband. The story continues as each sibling give us their POV. June is getting married, July is graduating and May is working at a Zoo holding her emotions down. You quickly learn that these siblings have something very unique to them and this that their father disappeared when they were little in Afghanistan. Although they are now grown, the loss lingers. And when April decides to take her mother on a cruise to get away, the last thing she expects to see is her father. This story is one of sibling relationships and what can break a family bond. It was so extraordinary to read everyone’s separate perspectives and just how much each sibling was affected in their own different ways. I thought it a lovely but sad story. I really enjoyed the detective aspect of it all and just how this hunt for their father brought them all back to each other, just like how his loss tore them apart. It was a special read.

The combination of a complex family drama with a missing persons case and kidnapping/spy stories makes this an interesting, compelling, and unusual read.

This book tells of four estranged siblings who find themselves at a wedding, one of the siblings has seen their long estranged father.
Each of these siblings are at a stalemate on their own lives. Having trouble moving forward, or committing.
It was a quick read!

This book was not what I expected and not in a good way. While I typically enjoy a multiple POV book, I didn’t feel like I was able to fully sink my teeth into each of the 4 siblings. The only character I really felt for and was rooting for was July, the rest were hard to root for.

I didn’t realize that this was going to play out more of a historical fictional book as opposed to a family drama which caught me off guard and I maybe wouldn’t necessarily would’ve read.

I wish we were able to get a glimpse more into all of the interconnectivity of how the siblings interacted and relationships grew. That part felt rushed to me especially from the description, I thought that was going to be the central theme/plot.


Thank you for the opportunity to read this book and provide honest feedback.

Four siblings have grown apart since their father went missing ten years ago while working in Iraq. This novel follows the impact of their loss and how the start to put the pieces back together.

What I liked

The book is about four siblings named April, May, June and July. Each of them had an interesting story about how their lives had gone in the past ten years. The book also followed how a personal tragedy could tear a family apart but also bring them together.

Two of the siblings were queer. June, who went by Juniper/Junie, is a professional soccer coach who is about to get married now that gay marriage is starting to become legal in the United States. She is a little bit androgynous/masculine leaning but doesn't feel super comfortable with that yet. Her story was the most fleshed out to me and the one I enjoyed the most. July is the little brother of the gang and is figuring out what to do with his crushes at college.

What didn't work for me

I thought this was going to be a family drama. The book cover has twinkle lights around the four siblings names that hint at a wedding. The blurb talks about everyone's relationship problems with spouses and crushes.

However, a lot of this book is about the Iraq War that started in the early 2000s. There is nothing wrong with that -- it is an important topic! But it's not what I was expecting to read when I picked up a book to help me relax at the end of the day.

A book set ten years ago doesn't feel like long ago enough to make this a historical fiction novel. But many of the political events in the book are not recent enough to feel fresh in my mind. So the author had to do a lot of heavy lifting to remind us what happened in the Iraq War twenty years ago.

I would have been more open to this if the history lessons were woven in a bit more to the story. But much of it was delivered in monologue form. It wasn't in-depth enough for me to actually sink my teeth into and learn. And the details didn't have enough personal stakes to the characters to make me push on through and engage. I started skimming parts of it, which made me feel very guilty!

Recommendation

I think knowing what this book is really about, will help it find the right audience. So if you want an (almost?) historical fiction book about the impact of the Iraq War on an American family, this book is for you!

This story follows the four Barber siblings, April, May, June, and July, as they try to find out what happened to their father who went missing ten years earlier and how to cope with the ways they have developed to deal with the trauma. It’s told through alternating parts of each sibling, so you get four POVs. This is done remarkably well, as each character has a strong individual voice. April is the eldest and she apparently has her life together with her nuclear family and career as a lawyer. But she is as unmoored as her siblings, and has been secretly having an affair. Meanwhile, May is dealing with depression and her dreams of travel have been crushed after losing her father. June has turned to alcohol, even as she plans her wedding with her future wife. July is obsessing over his straight roommate and trying to deal with the fact that, as the much younger sibling, he never truly knew his father. Over the years, the siblings have drifted apart, unmoored by their father’s unsolved disappearance after he was kidnapped while working as a private contractor for a company in Iraq. When April thinks she spots their father abroad, and with June’s wedding looming, the four are forced to come together and attempt to find their father.
The author very clearly understands people and how they work, and one thing this book does exceptionally is accurately portray sibling interaction. I have several siblings, and it’s difficult to find media that accurately reflects the way these family dynamics work. This book did it incredibly. I also found myself learning a lot about the politics of what was happening in Iraq and the surrounding areas at the time, and the story explores how in the US we’re often told one thing to excuse this country’s violence, while the opposite is often true. Overall, this is an honest and open portrayal of family and how they cope with trauma, and how that can be echoed around the world in various ways. Personally, I would love to read Tariq’s story, it was very compelling even though he was a minor character. Alison B. Hart clearly has a way with characters, and this was a well written story.

This was a great story and I enjoyed reading this book, it had a great concept. I enjoyed the family elements and how everything felt like a real story. I enjoyed how good Alison B. Hart wrote this and creating the characters.

This was such a delightful read! I really loved all the characters and their stories and how they were all interconnected. I highly recommend this book!

I really enjoyed April May June July and recommend this novel for fans of family dramas. Hart has crafted each of the characters so well that you feel you know each one. Right away we sympathize with their issues. As they get caught up in trying to figure out what happened to their father, and the wedding date approaches, the drama ratchets up. I think fans of Taylor Jenkins Reid would enjoy this novel. While it may seem frothy and light at first, the story is woven with deeper, more serious issues, which are rewarding ultimately, especially since we have grown to care about the characters.

Thank you to the publisher and to NetGalley for the advance e-galley; all opinions expressed herein are my own.