I was drawn to this book from a "if you love Liane Moriarty..." pitch. Which I do, so that may be why I didn't love this more. It felt like a Moriarty light edition. The story line and set up was so similar to that beloved author that it didn't feel a bit original. It also had all these name brand references which bugged me for some reason. Is this a sales pitch for diet Mountain Dew and Odwalla?
All of this possibly could have been overlooked if the scandal had been, well, more scandalous.
The writing flowed nicely, and I liked the characters, just needed a more authentic idea.

A very engaging read that lives up to the book's title: seemingly minor drama between parents and teachers that stirs up further trouble and catastrophes. Both the main protagonist and deuteragonist come into their own as the story unfolds, although it is often hard to find sympathy for the parents in this story. The multiple perspectives allow a few of the kids to shine, even if their perfect personalities and priorities seem unrealistic as high schoolers, made even more odd when compared to the imperfect and drama-prone adults around them. Overall, a fun and breezy read I would recommend in my library.

Enjoyable quick read about the inner-workings/politics of a school theatre program. My mom is a theatre teacher so I appreciated the theme. Cute.

4.5 stars, rounded. Personal experience has something to do with how very much I enjoyed Minor Dramas & Other Catastrophes- I personally attended a high school that reminds me very much of the one in this book (and was a theater kid at said school), and as a former resident of the Minneapolis suburbs I found that Kathleen West did an excellent job with the community she set there (and I will say that I entirely appreciated the perfect quantity and placement of occasional super Scandinavian names- spot. on.). However, I think this will be a relatable and appreciated story for any reader who can visualize the challenging politics of a high school for both the faculty and the students, and the downsides of the helicopter parenting approach. This is a thoughtful story about parenthood and education, and I'll be highly recommending it!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishing house for providing a review copy of this novel. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Fans of, The Gifted School, will get a big kick out the latest parenting dramas in, Minor Dramas & Other Catastrophes.

This story pits a teacher with a very progressive curriculum up against the school’s #1 helicopter parent.

Julia Abbott demands a lot from her kids, their teacher, and their school. As big donors, she feels that her “charitable gift,” to the drama department should yield a great role for her son in the play.

When her son doesn’t answer his phone, to tell her the casting, she takes it upon herself to plow all the kids down to see the posted cast list.

While bullying her way to the top, she accidentally hurts a student and the whole incident is captured on social media.

Both these women’s stories are amplified by the secret Facebook group, where parents complain about the staff, other parents, and anything else they feel they deserve.

This was a fun one if love those “rich parents behaving badly,” stories.

It also showcases how teens can assist in making their schools better, if we just give them a chance to do it.

This is a really enjoyable guilty pleasure of a book. There are super-involved parents, high school students and teachers, and the drama that surrounds a private gossip group on social media. Pretty much, if you don't know people like this, you are people like this.

I have recommended this to coworkers, friends, and patrons who are looking for a fun, quick read with relatable and recognizable characters.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced reader's copy in exchange for an honest review.

This was so very real and demonstrated how a minor incident can grow to epic proportions, impacting on the lives of everyone. There are many POV’s which enhance the story. We see high school life through the eyes of students, teachers, the administration, and the parents. There was humor, drama and a great deal of fun.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

3 1/2 stars -
As I was reading this book, I was reminded more of Pretty Little Lies than Where'd You Go Bernadette? Its definitely got its suspense elements, but there is a lot of humor, too. While its not dealing with murder, it is detailing some pretty poor behavior on the part of several of the characters. This book is a real object lesson in the dangers of the internet, and how you never know what's going to be posted and potentially impact your life. I liked the structure of the book, how each chapter is told from a different character's point of view. The shortness of the chapters also adds a lot of suspense, particularly at the end. I was a bit disappointed in the ending - it didn't seem entirely to fit with the rest of the book. However, it was an enjoyable read and I would recommend it.

I liked the pace of this book, but didn't particularly care for anyone in it. At the end of the book, I realized I didn't like one of the adult characters. If this is a reflection of the world we live in, I feel sorry for the children. So thankful I had parents and educators who let us make up our own minds about ourselves and the world around us. If nothing else, this was an eye-opening read.

This book was so much fun to read and so right in the present day. There are amazingly good teachers and helicopter parents in every community and today we have social media to amplify every good and bad. Looking forward to more from Ms West.

Fun book on the helicopter parenting trend. This book had a little more substance and depth than I was expecting, which was a pleasant surprise. Pretty spot on depictions for all the characters.

Minor Dramas and Other Catastrophes by Kathleen West delves into the high school world of teachers navigating both student and parental drama while trying to also do their job. This story is told through multiple narratives of teachers, parents, and students. Lots of social media drama also plays a role as the characters all try to best each other and make their way through the challenges of our world. Definitely an intriguing look into the high school world. Read and enjoy!

Minor Dramas & Other Catastrophes is an eye opening novel about helicopter parenting, education at an elite school, and social media. The dynamic of parents that feel their children are the only ones that matter, that the slightest word against them is a matter of life and death, that it will affect the rest of their lives is very well expressed in this novel. The novel also shows the negative side of social media, Facebook, Instagram, private groups for parents only, where no one knows who the administrator is and how that DOES matter. Nice character development, I recognized characteristics of those I am around. Well written.

entertaining yet serious look at the dangerous mixture of helicopter parents over involved in their kids’ lives, mixed with the perils of social media. Isobel teaches literature to high school freshmen, trying to bring kindness and empathy to some spoiled teens. The parents are so concerned with their kids success that they are willing to do almost anything. I liked the writing and the story, with the abuse of using social media and it’s effects clearly outlined. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

Minor Dramas and Other Catastrophes (February 2020)
By Kathleen West
Berkley/Penguin/Random House, 384 pages.
★★★★

This novel is so timely that it should be rushed to market. Kathleen West is high school teacher, and who better to weigh in on helicopter parents, tiger moms, the dangers of unregulated social media, truthiness, and–by extension–the college recruiting scandals?

Allow me to lead with the last of these. Many folks–me among them–have assumed that the offspring of elites were complicit in the schemes cooked up by their parents to secure admission to a good college. How could they not know about faked sports poses and padded personal profiles? Kathleen West made me rethink this.

Privilege doesn’t start when a kid is ready for college. It’s there early on and it takes a strong, perhaps precocious kid to question it. Unless some levelheaded adult–a teacher for instance–plants a challenge, a kid’s reality is assumed to be the ‘norm.’ And if one’s parents are really off the rail, teens often find it easier to pick their battles and go along with things their parents think are important.

Minor Dramas is set in a high-achievers high school near Minneapolis. Parents definitely rule the roost at Liston Heights High School. Principal Wayne Wallace spends much of his day appeasing the various parental groups that set both the curricular and extracurricular agendas. It speaks volumes about the medium family income to say that participation in drama is among the most prestigious things a kid at Liston High can do. Julia Abbott has been pressuring her 17-year-old son Andrew to secure a juicy role in the upcoming play to beef up his student profile. Andrew knows his talents are modest, but what he doesn’t know is that mom and dad gave the school money for its costume shop and have reminded both Wallace and the drama coach of that. Julia is a classic helicopter parent to Andrew and his 14-year-old sister Tracy. She basically traded her dreams of becoming a journalist to become a suburbanite busybody whose current obsession is trying to secure an advance cast list to see how Andrew fared. She texts Andrew incessantly until she can’t stand it anymore and sneaks into the school in time to see the list be posted. When Andrew is given a good role, she does an NFL-style victory dance and elbows Melissa Young in the stomach. Big problem in the age of social media! Julia’s antics were captured on a cellphone and soon the video has gone viral, threatens her husband’s development deal, and some want Julia to face assault charges. In the backswing of an elbow, Julia goes from queen bee to media hooligan and Liston outcast.

As it turns out, Julia and a few other parents have also spearheaded a campaign against Isobel Johnson, an innovative and idealistic English teacher from a working class background. Isobel wants to save the world and makes it her mission to make Liston kids aware of their privilege. She’s also Tracy Abbott’s favorite teacher, but not all Liston parents approve of interjecting identity politics into the curriculum–some because they don’t think it will help their kids do well on college entrance exams, and others because they think her views are Marxist. In other words, Liston is a place where one gets along by watching one’s back. Isobel isn’t cut out to do that, but students love her and she has been a great colleague–especially to first-year teacher Jamie Preston, a former graduate of Liston.

It all adds up to a school caught up in overlapping brouhahas–much of its own making and the rest fanned by social media. Facebook doesn’t come off very well in the novel, but bourgeois meddling comes off even worse. West structures her novel in such a way as to make Liston’s dual dilemmas collide and entangle. Minor Dramas is also a veiled novel within a novel. Isobel attracts the wrong kind of attention for some of the ways she teaches The Great Gatsby. West has the wisdom not to make her book any sort of gloss of Fitzgerald, but it did not escape my notice that many of the worst traits of Fitzgerald’s upwardly mobile West Egg bear similarities to those found in West’s Liston Heights. This is especially true in the self-centeredness of those with privilege and in decision-making patterns that disregard the impact on families lower down the social class ladder.

Minor Dramas and Other Consequences is a fine read, though I did find its denouement contrived and too neat. If you wonder, though, if all this stuff could possibly happen, let this former high school teacher assure you that it can. School culture and lack of support rank high among the reasons teachers quit. That data, by the way, comes from Minnesota!

Rob Weir

This book had me taking a morning off work so that I could finish it! I live in a community very similar to Liston Heights and know some moms very like Julia. I cringed and headsmacked my way through this story knowing that some of the comments and storylines could have come straight outta my neighborhood.

Julia Abbott is a type A, helicopter parent. She gave up her life to love and control her children's lives. If they wanted something she would find a way to get it, but one day it all goes horribly wrong for her in the school hallways. Isabel Johnson is a fantastic English teacher whose methods are starting to cause anxiety in the conservative, affluent parents. A voicemail on her home phone from an angry, concerned parent dovetails into something that could derail her career. These ladies are very flawed but ultimately all actions they do comes from a place of good.

I thought the multiple voices was very clever. It gave the reader the opportunity to see inside and understand the motivations of each character. I had sympathy and empathy for each person even when I wanted to shake them. I can see how some readers might find the whole story to be farcical and over reaching because it is ridiculous. However, know there are communities out there with over eager parents in Booster clubs who will go to great lengths to get their child involved.

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC. This is my honest review.

Review will be published on my blog on February 1st, 2020.


I picked up this book because it reminded me of Where'd You Go Bernadette? which I enjoyed. Where'd you Go Bernadette? has now been made in to a movie that I must still see.



Minor Dramas & Other Catastrophes revolves around the parents, students and teachers at a privileged school. Isobel Johnson is trying to make a difference teaching grade 9 English. She encourages her students to look at other perspectives in their novel studies. The story begins with an anonymous phone message suggesting Isobel stop teaching anti-American ideas. The message is a little worrisome but Isobel is accustomed to the controlling parents in the school community.



Julia is a parent to two children at the school. For years she's been hoping her son will make it to a leading role in the school play. She has generously donated a costume room. She has worked on the board helping to fund raise for the productions. Her son deserves this role and to be certain she's made a strong suggestion to the principal that the lead is the role for her son.



Things begin to unravel for Julia and Isobel and it's all being displayed and discussed on the parent's Facebook gossip page. But who is the person that owns and mediates the page? Why are they constantly stirring things up? How do they have know so much?

As an educator, I know these parents and students! And I was horrified by a few of the educators! And I laughed out loud at the reality and ridiculousness of some of the things that went on.

Overall, this is a timely tale of family, mental illness, and the state of the world today. It's an enjoyable read.

I enjoyed both Where’d You Go Bernadette and Small Admissions, which, in the marketing copy, this book is compared to. It shouldn’t be. It does feature those insufferable helicopter parents that I don’t know personally but have read about. Maybe it’s because I’m not a parent myself and I grew up in the days that preceded Law and Order being on TV twenty-four hours a day on multiple channels, so my parents let my sister and me play outside all day and simply figured we’d show up at dinner when we got hungry. Their idea of interfering in our studies was taking us to the library every week so we could read all the books we wanted.

The students in this novel are all wonderful. The villains are the adults. Not just the parents, who were far worse than any character from the movie Mean Girls, but also some of the teachers and administrators who only want to not anger the parents—getting the students to actually think for themselves is obviously too subversive because then they might not agree with their parents on everything.

Maybe if I recognized parents like that, I would have liked the distinctive soap opera drama over things that were outstandingly trivial more, but this story line just didn’t quite do it for me.

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book, which RELEASES FEBRUARY 4, 2020.

This funny book totally skewers high school in the same way that Class Mom by Laurie Gelman shreds the elementary school experience. At Liston High, it's time for Julia Abbott's son to take a lead in the school play. After all, the Abbotts donated the costume shop. But Julia's interference causes a stir, especially when an incident with her at the school is filmed by a student and shared on every social media site there is. This, along with the "Marxist" leaning ways of teacher Isobel Johnson, sets into a motion an over-the-top romp that, while extreme, will be recognizable to those of us with high school-aged children. Minor Drama gives the term "helicopter parent" a whole new dimension. Social media plays an aggressive and realistic role in the story, a suitable warning for our times.

The novel succeeds on so many levels, but I particularly enjoyed how we dipped in and out of the perspectives of parents, the students, the teachers, and the administrators. It's a tremendous feat to have so many characters, and at no time was I confused about who was who, as each has his or her own voice. At times, you're rooting for different people, and it's not always clear who the "bad guy" is. The ending is absolutely satisfying. This was a really fun read, and I'm grateful to Netgalley for sharing the book with me.