WELCOME BACK ALUMNI
CLASS OF 1995

“New friends may be poems, but old friends are alphabets. Do not forget alphabets, because you will need them to read the poems”.
—attributed to William Shakespeare

“It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with”.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The older you get, the more you need people who knew you when you were young”.
— the masses . . . in other words…. all of us.

…..I have so much love for this book. I related to every character….and every issue. “Reunion” is deliciously easy to sink our teeth into.
And although it’s a page-turner (we get hooked immediately)….its also a book to savor and ponder.
…..The strength of the characters’ depiction are so vivid - so human - I felt like I knew them.
…..Subtly, but not terribly subtly, Elise Juska’s nuances invites us to look at long term friendships, marriages, parenting, social changes, and the effects the pandemic has had on our lives and our children’s future.
Family dynamics are examined realistically. Splendors and complexities are scrutinized equally.

We’re introduced to three intelligent characters who were very close friends during their twenties in college at Walthrop - in Maine.
Now in their forties, Adam Dalton, Polly Gesauldi, and Hope Richardson have stayed in contact through emails and texts - all live in different states - each married with kids - will be re-connecting in person at their 25th/26th college reunion. There was a rescheduled year due to the lockdown.
The past and present are *consanguineous* (like that word?)….
Haha….me too. I just learned it when looking for a word to describe ‘related’ …or ‘cut-from-the-same-cloth’ ….or basically a powerful word to express the experience of ‘connection’…..underlining the fact that the ‘past-and-present’ are genetically linked.

This is such an enjoyable book with storytelling flair. The supporting characters …..spouses, children, other classmates, old roommates, background family issues, other characters we meet, the campus environment, Ledgemere Island (mountains and lakes nearby the college), details of each of characters personal lives ….all add richness.
But what’s really a surprise is the tension that slowly elevates towards the end ….. when an unexpected situation occurs.
I was hanging on by a thread —

A few small excerpts I’d like to share that spoke to me:
“Sitting at the end of the island, the world seemed majestic and mysterious, and lifted whatever unspoken tension had been building up inside him”.

“I just don’t want to spend two-thirds of my waking hours doing something that doesn’t add any value to the world. I don’t want to be a passive person”.

“Polly had always prioritized Jonah over everything else, trying to make up for what she hadn’t gotten from her own mother, what he wouldn’t get from his missing father. She supported his decisions, encouraged him to talk to her about anything, loved him exactly as he was. But it hadn’t been enough”.

“Our lives have just become totally different . . . “.

From this Elyse to Elise Juska > THANK YOU! This book felt very personal to me ….as a wife, mother, college graduate, a friend, a person who lost loved ones from covid and feel the change from the pandemic…. I loved this story and your writing.
I’m hooked at the hip now — and plan to read more of your books.

Highly recommended …..wisdom oozes throughout!

I enjoy college reunions as a setting for books, but this one fell a little flat and seemed forced. But I'm glad Juska chose to set it in 2021 and made the pandemic such an important focus. Four years later, it seems almost unreal and we shouldn't be forgetting the effect it had on all of us. If the author wanted a cloud of doom to hang over the whole book and paint it gray, then she succeeded. I found that irritating though. Your mileage may vary.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance copy of this book. Not my cup of tea, but I bet others will enjoy it!

Reunion is a retrospective and current-life reunion story that brings college friends together after living through the harrowing Covid years. The narrative is relatable but somewhat predictable and at times stale. Perhaps best for those who enjoy reading college and family dramas.

Thanks to NetGalley and Harper for the opportunity to read this ARC.

Really enjoyed this story of three college friends that meet up for their 25th reunion - one year delayed due to the pandemic.. This truly hit home for me as I approach my 25th and the insights about parenting during the past democratic were poignant and dead on. Would definitely recommend this book!

June 2021 — Three friends anticipate a Covid postponed college reunion at the Maine campus. Hope — a stay at home mom with an increasingly distant husband — is desperate to return to what she remembers as her happiest time; Adam looks forward to reconnecting but feels guilt at leaving his perpetually sad wife with the twins in the house that she hasn’t left in a very long time; and NYC based single-mom Polly who doesn’t share her friends fond memories, but is persuaded to attend by her reclusive son who wants to visit a nearby friend.

This character-driven novel explores friendships and personal growth against the backdrop of lockdown parenting and recovery alongside some pretty intense environmental anxiety. With every relationship comes inevitable clashes and this story covers quite a few. I particularly “enjoyed” the generational clashes — some familiar and some brand new to me as successive generations bear less and less in common with my own. Well written probes into the evolution of friendships
— what connects people with little in common and what decisions can impact the closeness over time. I really liked that the ending for all of our protagonists had a closure that was more about understanding the nature of their issues, thereby clarifying a path towards closure, rather than any kind of quick solution to the problem itself — because there really are no quick solutions to relationship issues…

One kind of funny (to me) quote as Hope thinks about her teenage daughter Izzy: “Meanwhile, Izzy was skeptical of all things where Hope was concerned. Her Spotify list. Her low-carb bread. Her Facebook posts — too frequent, too obviously curated — why was she even on Facebook? Her overuse of exclamation points. Her leather tote. Sometimes Hope secretly wondered if Izzy had become a vegan primarily to get on her nerves.”