A family saga involving multiple generations and points of view.

I was so excited to see this book up for request. I loved the two previous books I have read by this author. However, I must say this one was a disappointment to me. I found her other books captivating and so heartfelt. I didn't really like any of the characters in this one. I found most of them to be somewhat bratty regardless of age.

Don't get me wrong, there were some really good parts. I just had really high expectations that weren't met.

After reading Within Arm's Reach I learned that this is a reprint of the authors debut novel. Her writing and story telling has greatly improved since then. While I can't highly recommend this one, I absolutely can the two other books I have read by the author.

Thanks to netgalley and Random House Publishing for the arc.

I grew up in a large, Irish Catholic family, which is why this author’s books seem to resonate with me. I can see that if you didn’t grow up in this kind of family, it might be hard to connect with the characters and story. This book was originally published in 2004 and is being released again on April 30, 2024. If you have read Ann Napolitano’s other books, Dear Edward and Hello Beautiful, you will recognize that the writing in this title is definitely “debut” writing. I enjoyed the story of a large NJ family, but some parts seemed to run together. If you are a fan of Ann, I would recommend this book, but if not, you could easily skip it.

I was excited to receive a galley of this re-release of Napolitano's first book. Hello Beautiful was one of my favorite books last year so I was excited to read another of her books. This one was a slow burn family saga with an Irish-American family at the center. It is told from multiple perspectives and through 3 generations. It took me a bit to get invested in this book. I'd say I was a good 40% into the book before I felt like I was connecting with the story and able to keep the characters straight in my head. Once I was invested in the story, I enjoyed learning about the ins and outs of the family, the intricacies of their relationships, and the things they keep silent.

No matter how close we are to all of our family members, if they need us, we are right there for them. Gram is dying and the family comes together and finds how much they love each other. This is my fifth try at writing, but my reviews keep disappearing. So, read this book!

Within Arms Reach by Ann Napolitano
I didn't realize that this was a reissue of her first novel. Its a sweeping tale of 3 generations of women in a family and the decisions they make. This doesn't feel like a debut. Though the book was far more intense and sad than I believed it would be, but there was also a sense of hope. I enjoyed Napolitano's lyrical sense of story telling. Thanks to Net Galley for this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

While this is actually a re release of Napolitano's debut, it feels fresh as ever. Napolitano has become a breakout star with her more recent books, but Within Arm's Reach is just as strong. She writes family like no other.

Ann Napolitano is an auto-buy author for me so when Penguin Random House reached out to offer me an advance copy of the re-release of her first book I absolutely jumped at the chance! I loved this book and it's amazing to see how her style as an author both has and hasn't changed over the decades. This one reminded me a lot of "Hello Beautiful" and featured the same type of layered, character-driven, intergenerational story. I appreciated how this book really dived into complicated family dynamics, not just between people who grew up together but also between pieces of the family with different belief systems and class status. This is a great read whether you are new to Napolitano's work or a fan like me and don't miss the author's note where she reflects on what it means to republish this work and what it means to her today.

family sagas are my favorite genre but this one didn’t really do it for me. lila had absolutely zero redeeming qualities and was so absurdly self centered that I got angry.

Heartbreak, Secrets, dysfunction ... Family

Whinin Arm's Reach is a story about a large, multi generational Family narrated by 6 points of views.

The story had me struggling to keep up with who's who, what's going etc which in turn didn't enable me to fully engage with plot nor character.

Loving Ms. Napolitano's LATER works, I was genially disappointed I wasn't able to fully enjoy this read, however I was able to capture moments within my journey.

Thank you Random House via Netgalley for providing me a copy.

#WithinArmsReach #NetGalley

Just like all of Ann Napolitano's books this one is very well written and thought out. It is a great family drama told in the POV's of different family members and one non family member. It mostly centers around Catharine, the mother and grandmother of the main family in the story. She has suffered loss in her life from her husband to a three year old daughter and still born twins. I think in her own right she just carries her sorrow inside herself and really does not communicate well with her children. Her children then, do not communicate well within their families or within themselves. Lila and Grace are two of the granddaughters. One is the writer of a "dear Abby" like column and one is a medical student. Lila, the medical student is very smart and has great grades but when it comes to compassion for her patients, she has none. Grace is very close with her Gramma but not that close with her mom. While reading this book I could think of many families who are probably like this one. There is the drama. Some of this drama is centered around an out of wedlock pregnancy. Also, fertility issues with another family member who really wants the baby from the unwed soon to be mother. Lila and Grace's parents are also having issues. The dad, Louis feels extremely guilty about one of his employees dying on the job. He takes to withdrawing from his wife Kelly and sleeping in the spare room. Kelly then, feeling unloved seeks fulfillment from another source. In some parts of this book it becomes awkward because you really want them to just communicate with each other. There is also more family drama and certain social aspects touched upon in this book. It is a sad book but it really touched my heart and I enjoyed reading this.
Thanks to #netgalley, #randomhousepublishing and @annnapolitano for an ARC of this great read.

Themed around three generations of Irish women, Within Arms Reach is a beautifully written story, and also Ann Napolitano’s first published novel. Given the author’s past two books Dear Edward and Hello Beautiful, I suspect the publisher decided to republish as a result of Ms Napolitano’s current success and popularity. I was glad to have the opportunity to read it. And it was quite good, just not as extraordinary as her later books. If I had read this first, I would undoubtedly been looking forward to future works.

Grandmother Catharine McLaughlin, matriarch of her clan, is mother of six offspring, three others having died early in life. Those were the times of of early deaths, high infant mortality and lack of modern medical advances. Her daughter Kelly, in her fifties, has not yet found herself. Her relationships with her two daughters, Lila, a medical student, and Gracie who is unmarried and pregnant, are stilted and awkward. They are emotionally estranged. The younger women feel a closer bond with their grandmother.

Written in Napolitano’s beautiful prose, her debut novel is a worthwhile read, although it is somewhat clumsy, having too many narrators, and so many characters, that I had to keeping stopping and backtracking to keep them in their places. Three and a half stars rounded up to four for Within Arms Reach. Thank you NetGalley and Random House for this advance readers copy in exchange for my review. Publication date is April 30, 2024.

Within Arm's Reach is a slice of life saga that follows a large, dysfunctional Irish Catholic family.  
 
This book revolves around an aging matriarch, Catharine, who is trying to correct generational mistakes that have led to a family in crisis with a granddaughter who is pregnant out of wedlock.
 
You are following a large cast of characters. When you've had 9 children, significant others, grandchildren and all the aspects of modern families, you are thrown a lot of names and a lot of who's who.
 
This book is very character driven. The problem arises when you are following 6 points of view. Although you get a feel for how the family works, you are not given enough time with each character to understand the reasons for their actions. I didn’t find myself rooting for any of them, which left me little reason to be invested in the story.
 
In some ways, I really connected with this book. Being raised in the Catholic church, I felt the author’s portrayal was accurate. She included a lot of the belief system that I was raised with. I also found Catharine’s perspective to be very believable.  I watched my grandfather move through the aging process. Entering an assisted living facility, breaking a hip and the gradual decline of his health, Catharine’s experiences in this book parallel what I watched happen to my own grandfather.
 
I also feel that this author tries to do too much. Every family has their issues, but it feels like she opened a drawer with the worst life can throw at you and dumped it into this book. PTSD, mental illness, depression, death, infertility, accidental pregnancy, etc. With so many problems within one family, it takes away the importance of these topics and desensitized me as the reader.
 
This book also lacked any visible personal growth. These characters didn’t seem any better off at the end of the story than at the beginning. I found the characters to be messy, flawed and sometimes toxic. They were full of contradictions. Worst of all, the matriarch thought bringing a child into this world was going to put the family back on solid ground. I don’t mind an ambiguous ending if it’s done well, but this book literally just ends. If you are looking for answers or resolutions, you won’t find them here.
 
Unfortunately, this book feels like a fantastic author’s debut novel. I read Dear Edward in 2020 and Hello Beautiful in 2023, which were both beautifully written books. This book does show how much the author has grown as a writer. I just didn’t find this one to be well executed. Each of her novels has shown her progression as an author. With that said, I will continue to read her books as they are published.

Within Arms Reach is a beautifully written family drama by Ann Napolitano. This book is a re-release of her first published novel from 20 years ago. In it, we follow three generations of a large Irish Catholic family as they navigate through life’s challenges, including an unexpected pregnancy. While not quite as good as her most recent novels, the well developed characters and their connections ring true.

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley for the advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

#bookstagram #readeveryday #bookreview #WithinArmsReach #NetGalley #fourstarread #RandomHouse #fiction

Thank you to NetGalley, Ann Napolitano and Random House Publishing for this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

First off, I did not do my research before requesting this book. It wasn’t until I was about a quarter of my way through the book that I realized this is a reprint/republished edition of a book that was originally released in 2004. Which was entirely my fault. But also made a lot of sense, as this book had little references to cell phones or other social media or any current pop culture references that you would find in a book published in 2024. My bad! I promise I can read! I just get so excited when I’m selected for an ARC, and don’t always look before I jump [into a book].

That being said, I think my mistake actually lends to the timelessness of this story. I would have been 12 when this book was first published, but now I’m almost 32, and this book hit home for me. That is not to say that I have a large dysfunctional family that is anything like the McLaughlin clan. But the Irish-American family wielding their Catholic guilt trips and the multigenerational trauma that is in no way addressed or worked through by the older generation but instead dumped on their children by way of passive-aggression and the stunting of emotional relationships is basically every millennial’s origin story. And so the relatable-ness of this story is what drove me to keep reading.

This is a very character-driven book, and the characters were so well-developed, I felt like I knew them. Maybe because I know people just like them, or maybe readers can find bits of themselves in these characters (I know I can). The characters all reflect the age-old idea that we never really know why someone acts the way they do – we never really get a chance to open up their mind for ourselves and dig deeper into their background, their mistakes, their trauma. But we all have the chance to learn and grow from our own mistakes. To break the generational trauma, to work on ourselves for the benefit of others.

I’m so happy that my first Ann Napolitano book was actually Ann Napolitano’s first book. Can’t wait to jump into some of her other (more current) books.

DNFd at 15%… the first chapter was so awful and triggering I genuinely couldn’t get past it. PLEASE check TW for this one…

thanks to Netgalley for the eArc of this book. I loved it. Told from multiple viewpoints, the reader really gets to know each of the characters. The plot and the characters stick with you and it is a book that you think about long after you close it.
I highly recommend!

This is a detailed, in deapth look at a multi generational Irish American family in New Jersey and the secrets and bonds that keep the together and push them apart. Siblings, spouses, cousins and grandparents all connect in this family and the overriding theme I found is how to make this next generation “better” from the errors and sins from the previous generation. So many secrets keep this family from sharing their truths and feelings with each other.
There are moments of beautiful writing. When they reflect on the desperation to fix the broken bonds between generations-especially Catherine. But overall I struggled with this book and it took me forever to finish. I just found most of the characters unlikeable. I found it about 30% too long and I lost internet. I appreciated her prose and the take on fixing the family errors before a family splits off and loses all ties to each other. I felt very connected personally to that theme. I did appreciate how she wrote the relationship between all the female generations, especially the cousins and how difficult each one was, it was incredibly honest.

Thank you to Random House and Ann Napolitano for the opportunity to read and review this book

This was my first experience with Ann Napolitano, & I was disappointed with this story. I had trouble keeping track of all the family members, & the plot didn’t keep me engaged. I’ll still give her other books a try & hope for better results. Thanks to NetGalley for an advanced copy of the ebook.

I will be upfront and say I had a hard time getting into this book and hated the characters. I requested this book because I had heard how good the author’s book “Hello Beautiful” was. I learned later that this book was actually the author’s first published book that was being re-released. The book read like it was supposed to be a memoir of a 4 generation family; instead of a work of fiction. I didn’t feel like there was a plot to the book other than sharing the plights of this very spoiled and dysfunctional family. Throughout the book, I kept repeating to myself “these people need therapy.” While it was not my favorite read, I have to give the author kudos for eliciting the anger I felt toward these characters. I would be willing to give another one of her books a try to see if I could get into it more.

⭐️⭐️/5

Thank you to the author and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This story follows the lives of a large Irish American family, told throughout several viewpoints. While I typically love family dramas, this one dragged a bit. I didn't feel a sense of connection to any of the main characters and it took quite a while to see redeeming qualities emerge from them. The last quarter of the book they seemed to finally let their walls down, come together in support of each other and demonstrate some character growth. I would have loved to see those ties strengthening throughout the book more.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.