Rocky and her family have gone to a rental in Cape Cod for 20 years. This year, the vacation feels different. Rocky's kids are almost fully grown, but not quite, her parents are getting older faster than she would like and she is experiencing all the joys of menopause.

As they spend the week together, Rocky sees things differently than she has in the past. She has secrets that she no longer wants to keep.

Why Jackie loves it

This 236-page book is an absolute must-read. I related to Rocky's mood swings and inner monologue so much I was screaming with laughter. The way she simultaneously loved her husband and felt the urge to slap him was all too familiar (sorry honey). I also loved the relationship that she had with her kids. This book is perfect for any woman who is in the sandwich generation and trying to find her place as a mother and daughter.

Why Kirsten loves it

I savored this book and it ended too soon for me. Newman's portrayal of being a mother, a wife, and a daughter were spot on. I laughed out loud and even cried a little too with this 5-star book.

(2.5 stars)
Sandwich is set during a one-week family vacation on Cape Cod, in a house they’ve rented for a week for decades. Not a whole lot actually happens during the week, so be prepared for a lot of conversation, making of sandwiches, and personal memories, all told by the mother of the family, Rocky (nickname for Rachel). I was bored for a good portion of the story. The main narrator (Rocky) is a really whiny, annoying person! She’s in her 50s and is going through menopause - and she’s REALLY going through menopause! (I’m thankful my experience was nothing like hers. She should really see a doctor about it.) Her two adult children are with Rocky and her husband for the week, along with the son’s long-time girlfriend. So there’s five people sharing a relatively small house with one bathroom. And then Rocky’s aging parents arrive for a couple of days. So that’s the set-up.

The current story is told in the present tense (“I say” versus “I said”) and Rocky’s flashbacks are told in the past tense. It took me a while to catch on to that.

Rocky keeps thinking back to when her now-grown children were little and how much she loved them, as well as reliving two traumatic episodes from those days. I thought her husband, Nicky, was pretty much a saint to deal with Rocky.

I believed I would relate to the people in this book, having raised three sons and having lost both sets of parents/grandparents, but I just didn’t connect with any of these people. The writing at times was quite lovely, which is why I rounded up my rating a bit.

There’s a lot of blunt language (plenty of cursing) and frank talk about pregnancy and abortion, among other topics. The family is Jewish, but not in a very obvious way (they certainly don’t keep kosher, since some of their meals consist of scallops and lobsters), but during a discussion with Rocky’s parents, the fact that Rocky’s grandparents died in the Treblinka concentration camp came to light. Really? Not until that moment? I found that truly unbelievable. And the secret that Rocky was keeping from her husband was just terrible. I’m not sure how he stays with her, to be honest. Like I said, he came across as practically a saint.

Sorry, but this one just wasn’t for me. At least it was short.

Thank you to Harper and NetGalley for the opportunity to read a review copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

This book was a bit too vulgar and had some strange, overtly sexual language in reference to the narrator’s children. Overall, it was just not my niche, but I could see some appeal for other readers.

Thank you for a book that puts women in their 50's, and experiencing menopause at the forefront of a novel! It is nice to be seen! The author, character and I do not share the same background or race, but we are both women and that is often enough to have shared experiences.

The events in this novel take place over a week, the story is told by Rocky (wife, mother, and daughter in her 50s), who is on a family vacation with her grown kids, husband, and aging parents. It is a day in the life, with flashbacks to events Rocky is re-living that still haunt her and still have a lasting impression on her current life events. If you are looking for a bunch of thrilling action, this is not the book for you. But if you are a woman of a certain age ( 40+), then you will get this story, and it will be satisfying to see yourself! Dealing with marriage issues, aging parents, kids who are adults, but not quite adults, and the dreaded menopause, it's all in this compact story, and the writing is very enjoyable! This book is a fast read, but I was never bored.
This book was provided by Netgalley.
I am now interested in this author's prior books.

What a lovely book that hit at a great time for me. In this story we follow Rocky as she and her family take their annual summer vacation for a week to the beach. Rocky uses this time to reflect on her children when they were little, and how fleeting that time is. And to look forward to when her parents might not be able to join her on the trip any longer. She is part of the sandwich generation where she is helping her adult children, and also her own parents as they age. Especially reading this this summer, after having just lost my father, I loved the way Newman captured how fleeting time can be, and to enjoy it while we can.

There were so many good quotes from this book but I just want to share one:

“Maybe grief is love imploding. Or maybe it’s love expanding. I don’t know. I just know you can’t create loss to preempt loss because it doesn’t work that way. So you might as well love as much as you can. And as recklessly. Like it’s your last resort, because it is.”

Really torn on this one. I had been looking forward to reading this one as soon as I heard about it. I was thrilled to get it this week as a Libby hold. It was very easy to read, certainly relatable, in regard to the age of the main character and also with the angst of having young adult children who have flown or are about to fly the nest. There was much to enjoy with this book. I am always a sucker for a family going to Cape Cod. I have never been there but always enjoy stories that are set there. I enjoyed the passages about Rocky and how much she missed her children’s childhood. She was very irritating though. Just too over the top and frankly mistreated her husband. The commentary about menopause was hilarious and often spot on but again over the top. I just really was not fond of her. I loved the final chapter and the poignant statements about love and family and grief. Beautiful prose but the characters got on my nerves.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review of the book.

Perfect. I loved how this book covered the motherhood of adult children. And how place brings back all the memories. There were sentences where I nodded along- everything was so true and relatable. A beautiful short novel that I will recommend to all mothers.

Genre: Contemporary/Literary

Format: Audio/Physical

5🌟 - I loved it!

I loved this slice-of-life novel! Visiting the northeast this summer made me want to prioritize this one especially after seeing my bestie @booksbyheath rave about it!

This is an epitome of a character-driven novel! I think if you love being dropped in the middle of the lives of characters in a book, you’ll love this one. Although this book from the outside is a story about normal things and a normal life, it has a lot of deeper themes and topics explored. It made me want to go back to the northeast ASAP!

A family continues their tradition of staying at their beachside house; this slim novel looks at one particular summer in recent memory, particularly the wild events that occur and the secrets that come to the surface.

This had a lot of potential but didn't live up to a lot of it for me, unfortunately. The verisimilitude was absolutely stunning, and Newman's a great writer; with that, Rocky's narrative voice did feel flat and a bit heavy-handed in parts for me. Part of this also might have been that I was going in anticipating a light, summer read - but there are some heavy, serious topics discussed here. So that's not really a dig on the book but just about my own expectations.

This one hit home. Sandwiched between two generations, taking care of your parents and half grown kids, while dealing with your body going through changes. This made for an engaging read!
Thank you #harper and #NetGalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review

I highlighted so many lines throughout this. So much golden wisdom

I’ve also never read a more perfectly accurate description of the Cape in summer.

A delight of a book! I laughed, I cried, I felt seen. If you want to read something light, but meaningful and to feel understood, don't miss this one!

Sandwich is a slice of summer life in a family that yearly vacations in Cape Cod. Rocky fondly remembers when her children were younger and needed her more. She has excellent and open relations with her children, but as she goes through menopause, she sometimes misses the way things used to be and when everyone needed her more. One snippet that rang true to life was her keeping up with everyone's doings by what they were ordering on her Amazon account.

What I liked about the book most was the witty dialogue and characters that really jumped off the page. The character of Rocky felt very real, if a little angsty. She didn't annoy me as much as she seemed to some of the reviewers.

Where the book fell short for me was the plot. The storyline was very thin to me, and while the good writing kept me going to the end, the story itself didn't.

Thank you to NetGalley, Catherine Newman, and Harper Collins for allowing me to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Parts of this were charming and moving — it’s rare to read a book from the perspective of a menopausal woman who is so unapologetic about her needs and feelings. And the discussion of reproductive choices and regret was nuanced and powerful. But lots of the narrator’s quirks, which I suspect I was meant to find endearing, were just baffling and exhausting and off putting. And that in turn made it hard for me to care about some of the bigger emotional reveals. So, mixed bag.

While I quite enjoyed the ambiance and setting of this book, I was distracted and annoyed at some of the opinions of the matriarch and disagreed with some of the flippant opinions.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper for the complimentary e-copy of this book.

Rocky looks forward to the week her family spends in a tiny Cape Cod rental every year. She's now approaching menopause and is juggling hot flashes with her two adult children who have moved away from home but are still young enough to need their mother. Every family has secrets, and Rocky learns to prepare herself for openness and change while accepting the things she cannot undo.

I wasn't sure about this book at first--I couldn't quite tell where the plot was going and some of the humor didn't quite land with me. But by the end, it turned into a beautiful story about womanhood, female bodies, and family. I still do not think I grasped the full range of emotions the author had in mind due to the fact I am not a mother, but nonetheless, this book still had me laughing and crying. This is a quick read if you are still nostalgic for summer!

This is an enjoyable, easy summer read—quick and undemanding. It's a great example of modern women’s fiction, offering more than just light entertainment. The title "Sandwich" plays on two ideas: the Cape Cod town where the story is set and also symbolizes the narrator's role in her family, caught between caring for her aging parents and her almost-adult children, much like a sandwich with too many ingredients.
The long-standing tradition of summer vacations on the Cape provides a nostalgic backdrop, with both humorous and poignant moments. I found myself drawn to the universal themes of family ties, generational responsibility, and the bittersweet nature of change. Though a short read, you will relate to many of the characters.

3.5 stars . I enjoyed the cape cod content, though unfortunately most of it consisted of made up places and such. This book overall kept my interest. However, at times it saddened me , made me anxious, and even a couple times annoyed me.

This went right down the middle for me.
There were parts that tugged at my emotions and really left me relating or thinking of similar instances but the mom POV was very hard for me.
I'm a mom, not of teenagers but adolescents and she just read very immature and annoying at times, definitely felt more of an older generation...like an late 80's helicopter, less social parent.
I understood her wanting to keep things to herself, her views on her children as adults and sort of teaching them to see parents as not just parents but humans as well.
I really didn't enjoy her lashing outs at her husband, it honestly was kind of triggering to read growing up with an angry adult household.
The narrator was very easy to read, the writing style was breezy but didn't lack importance. I just didn't find it was marketed properly is what it comes down to... it isn't a beach read or even a summer read just because the cover is shown as such.
I take a cape trip every year with my family, sometimes two, and some of it sort of went along but it was sometimes just hard to overlook the annoyance in some parts to really see the messages within.

Poignant, relatable, and right on time for this current stage of my life. Made for a really lovely and perfect summer read for me.

Thank you to Harper, NetGalley and the author for this wonderful ARC.