Alice Sullivan is the type of wife and mom who portrays a picture perfect life, but is unraveling inside. I love reading about women like this; when they figure out that perfection is boring, it always makes for a great story.

When Alice discovers her daughter struggles with schoolwork and her son is on the wrong path, she begins to question her parenting. When her mom reveals a serious secret she’s been keeping, all hells breaks loose.

I thought this was an interesting, fun, and fast-paced story. The multiple perspectives made this a super quick read, and I usually don’t like reading from the perspective of so many characters. It didn’t feel bogged down or confusing, so that’s a plus. Alice’s husband seemed like a “good guy” but he was so absent he might as well not have been in the book at all, although I know that’s the reality for many working moms who do it all, even with a spouse. While Alice was greatly concerned about the issues her kids were having, we really only see her deal with her son’s issues. Granted, his problems were much more serious and pressing than her daughter’s, but it was still frustrating to read about.

This was a solid story.

Alice is kicking ass and taking names. She is great at her job, and has two amazing kids. Until the day her son gets suspended for pantsing another student during the assembly, and she finds out her daughter is very behind in reading comprehension. In working to get to the bottom of Teddy’s issue, several parents realize their kids have finsta accounts they hide from them. Will Alice be able to keep herself together with everything going on?

I know I have said this before but I would die if I was a teenager right now. AIM was bad enough during my middle/high school years, if I had to deal with instagram and snapchat as a teen…I can’t even imagine.You also know I love some adults behaving badly. This book was more kids behaving badly and parents reacting badly to the bad things their kids did. It was so frustrating that Teddy seemed to get all the hate from everyone (not saying the things he did weren’t messed up) but why was Tane all good and never in trouble? He was just as bad. Much like Minor Dramas & Other Catastrophes, so many woman that care more about what people think of them than anything else. Overall I really enjoyed this one!

Alice lives a bit on a high horse with her perfect life. This all comes crashing down when her son displays bullying behavior at school. She doesn’t recognize her son and can’t get through to him. Will her friends be able to help?

I enjoyed reading this book, even though I was very uncomfortable at times. It was difficult reading what the teenagers were going through and feeling the frustration and helplessness of their parents. I absolutely loved that the narration changed from parents to children. It gave an amazing opportunity to hear the differing perspective. I don’t have teenagers yet, but I know we all wonder what go through their minds. The teenagers’ chapters gave a good insight into that through some difficult situations. There really was not any huge climax to the book, which I liked. I found it much more true to life with its slow simmer drama. There were many perspectives, which made for short chapters, and a very well rounded perspective. While enjoying this book, I also feel like I gained from it as well.

“In this day and age, it’s impossible to keep a secret”

Are We There Yet comes out 3/16.

Alice is cruising right along. Her career is going well, she has the perfect family, her husband is a successful attorney, she feels far superior to her friend whose son is very odd, she finds time to go for coffee occasionally, and then the bottom falls out. Her second grade daughter can't read and her middle school son is involved in a bullying scandal. All at once, her construct collapses. Now, she is the parent who meets with teachers and administrators. She is the parent who needs to work with her child each night - when is she ever to find the time to do that? And what will the other moms in her social circle think of her? What does her husband think of her? Did he see any of this coming? And, most importantly, how does she help her children and herself get lives back on track?

Really enjoyed this book involving family drama, from kids getting into trouble to overprotective moms to adoption - well written and with intense characters, I would definitely look for Kathleen West's next book! Thanks to NetGalley for an advanced copy.

I wasn’t sure how to categorize “Are We there Yet?” Is it Contemporary Women’s Fiction? Book Club Fiction? Or Humor or Satire? On Amazon, it is classified as “Friendship Fiction”, although I’m not sure you’d want to be in this group of friends!

Whatever you want to call it, this book is an interesting mixture of quirky characters, modern family life, social media problems, the joy of motherhood, and the challenges of family and friendships. As a mother myself, one of my favorite sayings is “You’re only a phone call away from disaster.” One morning, main character Alice is off to a good start- kisses her nice husband goodbye, drops the kids off at school, heads to her job as an architect/interior designer and then…the phone rings!!!… problems!!! and the messaging and social media angst erupts, too.

And the phone keeps on ringing for Alice. Not only are her kids in trouble at school, her mother has had a life epiphany and Alice’s boss is difficult. Her friends aren’t really there for her. And what does the crazy spray painting of male genitalia around her cozy suburb mean? Her two friends that she thought she could count on are dealing with their own issues and no one wants to admit to being a bad mother.

I ended up liking Alice as through it all, she seemed to have a good heart and she loved her family. There are plenty of other characters to get to know in this book, and many of the characters have their own POV chapter. Some of the kids in the book also have their own chapters, and at times this book seemed like it was more of a YA read. All the characters and changing POVs make for a slow read. It’s not a book you will get lost in, but it is a book that will entertain you and will make you reflect a bit about your own life. How good a mother was I to my young kids I found myself asking.

Thanks to NetGalley and Berkley for an advance digital review copy. This is my honest review.

I liked this book. As a parent, I could relate to some of the over the top drama. I thought this was an entertaining book to read and I would recommend. I look forward to reading more by Kathleen West!

This book tells the story of Alice and her friends who are going through trouble parenting with young teenagers. What do you do when a mother who thought she had her life together discovers that her children are having problems she never imagined? Alice will need to assess her priorities in relation to her friends , her mother and her career.

As a mother I loved this book; it is well written and has wonderful characters. It is easy to relate to Alice as a mother and woman with her strengths and shortcomings. Motherhood is so easily judged by other women, even with your closest friends. It was a fantastic book, I highly recommend it.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

The slippery slope of parenting is a great topic for a novel and this title absolutely brings a smile to my face. Alice's anxiety with her kids and the concern about peer judgement strike a good chord. I can see this book being a popular pick for book clubs. Thank you for the ARC.

Could we make a new category for books like these? Perhaps competitive parenting fiction or making all the parenting mistakes fiction or trying to be friends with adult women fiction.........I greatly enjoyed this one. Thanks to netgalley for allowing me to read the ARC. I sped through this one. As a parent of a tween and a teen boy, this touched on so many issues that I find myself confronted with on a regular basis. Then there's the inevitable minefield of friendships with parents of your children's peers........oh, this is well written! I do with we had heard more from Nadia as a character, not just as a side note. I found hers to be a voice that I desperately wanted to read.

I give this 4 stars.

3.5 stars
Though rather reminiscent of Bruce Holsinger’s The Gifted School, this novel was an enjoyable romp through the trials of 7th grade for both children and parents.

Three mothers and their children have been friends since kindergarten, but when Teddy Sullivan uses his popularity to start bullying another kid, it collapses a whole house of cards. His mother, Alice, tries to juggle dealing with this new side of Teddy along with her younger daughter’s reading difficulties, all while working with a major new client in her interior design career and her husband’s continued absence on work trips. As she tries, and fails to cope, she alienates her two close friends and her mother, Evelyn, who is going through her own family upheaval.

Composed of short chapters told from multiple perspectives, the story rattles along. I sympathized with Alice, thought Evelyn was a self-centered pill, and found the children’s lack of impulse control to be cringingly realistic. On the other hand, the warm and sunny resolution, though satisfying, felt a little pat.

This is yet another book in which it turns out that women can’t have it all on their own terms and that mothers can really both mess you up and be just what you need.

Thanks to Berkley and Netgalley for the digital review copy.

💚 Review time 💚

This book was a quick read. I did enjoy it and would recommend. This review may have spoilers because there’s quite a bit I have to say about it, so let me start off by the synopsis of the book and then I will get into my thoughts so as not to have you read further should you not want spoilers.

Alice,Meredith, and Nadia are all friends with children in high school. They all seemingly have their life together when an incident begins to unravel Alice and Meredith. Alice soon realizes that her picture perfect life on the outside is not always what it is on the inside. Her child Teddy, does something to Meredith’s daughter, Sadie, which causes an upheaval between friends and the whole school. Sadie is in the middle and Meredith must come to understand that her child isn’t perfect. Alice’s mother also drops a bombshell on her.

In the beginning I could not tell if this book was meant for adults or young adults. There is much co-mingling between both genres. The premise of the book is a great one and it definitely kept me interested enough to finish the book however there are a few things that I really struggled with reading this book.

Spoilers ahead📚
Let me start off by saying that I had a really hard time liking Alice, Meredith, and Alice’s mother throughout this whole book. Let me start off with Alice’s mother Evelyn. Well the wall she plays is not a main part in the book it is definitely a post that plays into Alice’s lack of perfect life. I really felt like Evelyn was selfish and how she handled the revealing of her biological daughter, Julienne, whom she recently came in contact with, to her adopted daughter Alice. I felt with Evelyn being a therapist and she should have been more understanding of the time that it would take for Alice to get used to the idea that she had a sister, and one that was her mothers biological daughter. I do not feel that Evelyn was no chewing nor understanding enough in the situation and was actually quite selfish. Now having understood that whole excitement of knowing, meeting, and having a relationship with her biological daughter is of the upmost importance the way she handled the situation in my opinion was wrong.

Meredith is another one that I had a really hard time putting myself in her shoes. Anyone who believes that their daughter is just perfect all the time my opinion is insane. You have to realize that your children are not perfect and in this but Meredith comes across as if she believes her daughter Sadie, can do no wrong and she’s just perfect little angel who is always going to be number one at everything she does. That is delusion and the way she handles the situation with her daughter almost as if she’s disgusted with her actually makes me cringe. As a mother of two girls myself, I know that they have done and will continue to do things that are not perfect and how do I handle the situation the way Meredith does in the book I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have a relationship with either one of them right now. So I had a hard time relating to her.

Alice is the one who is the actual main character in the book and he’s the one that I disliked the most. I understand having a busy life and I understand that sometimes your busy life pushes your children to the side. But when she receives a warning from another parent, Nadia, I’m not sure about you, but my first instinct is to immediately go to my child and find out what in the world is going on and why. I do realize that in the time that she received a warning and the time in which Teddy was called out of school that wasn’t really a place in there where she could have a discussion with her son. Then when she finds out that her child is having an issue at school to fight whether or not to help him and get some therapy for him is asinine to me. There should be absolutely no question, because once again no child is perfect. I understand the struggle between wanting a career, and raising children, but your children always, always come first and to see her struggle with it is hard for me because I don’t understand the mindset. That is not to say that other people will not understand it, there may be many who read this book that do.

I do have to say that Nadia, is my absolute favorite person in the book. Even though she does not come up a whole lot, and it’s not really a main character in the book. She’s like that quiet friend that gently guides you through whatever it is that you are going through. She realizes the children are not perfect, and she realizes that you have to figure out what you need to figure out on your own while quietly supporting you from afar or from your side knowing that at some point you’ll figure it out.

Fans of Celeste Ng or Liane Moriarty will enjoy this novel about suburban women balancing their friendships, families, and careers as they navigate the teenage drama their children encounter and the controversy and ripples it sends through their relationships and community. Readable, relatable, and to be recommended!

Alice Sullivan is the mom of two and an interior designer. She has the perfect life until one day everything comes crashing down. She finds out that her youngest, Aidy, is falling behind in reading in second grade, and her eldest, Teddy, is bullying another boy in his middle school class. Alice starts questioning her parenting skills, and doesn’t know how to fix it. It doesn’t help that Teddy’s behavior starts spiraling out of control, and the other mothers look down at her.

With all this going on, Alice’s mother drops a family secret, another thing Alice is not sure how to deal with. Alice slowly learns how to cope and soon finds out that she needs live her life under her standards, not everyone else’s.

I enjoyed the drama and the multiple characters. It sheds realistic light on the dangers of social media and its repercussions. A great story of parenthood, family, middle school drama, and the unrealistic expectation of “being perfect.”

I definitely recommend.

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing for the advanced eARC for an honest review.

An excellent book by an author that I was not familiar with. It was well written with really good plot development and characterization. I would recommend it.

⭐️⭐️.5

This is a story about a group of moms dealing with their young adult children as they make the inevitable poor decisions it takes to become sensible adults.

I liked that this book made me question different parenting styles and I came out of it feeling like nobody should be judging anyone’s child because no child is perfect; all of them make poor, embarrassing life decisions that are necessary for enlightenment. Also, nobody knows their children as well as they might think.

Nevertheless, I found the plot line was flat and wasn’t eager to read further at any point. I was turned off by the fact that the moms had male partners who were mostly absent from parenting. It wasn’t realistic to me, this day in age, especially given the extent of issues the mothers were struggling to cope with. I found it difficult to relate to even as a mother myself.

This story had so much potential. At one point, a child is pulled out of their school to avoid confronting the challenges they face among their peers. Escaping problems does not make for a moving story. I think it would’ve been more entertaining and meaningful to see the young characters learn about accountability and repercussions. I was also turned off by the catastrophic impact of the students’ actions on the relationships of the adults. I felt the parents should’ve set a better example for the kids.

Look out for this one on March 16, 2021.

A book that left me reflecting. This book takes place in England. Alice Sullivan finally found her groove. It only takes a moment in her life to unravel. However, that same day she learns that her daughter is having problems at school. Not only that, her son was accused by his school of bullying. Alice does not know what to do. Her son has a new behavior, and she wants to do something about it. One of Alice's fears is giving the image of being a mother who cannot control her children. In addition to these new problems, Alice's mother shares with her a family secret that she has kept for more than 30 years. Now Alice wants to rebuild her life in the best way. I loved this book because the author describes the complications Alice faces. I think it must be hard to have children in school and even more to find out that one of yours is bullying. I thank Net Galley and Berkley Publishing Group for providing me with a copy of the book in exchange for my honest review.

Alice has always strived for the perfect life, but everything starts falling apart at the same time. Her daughter is falling behind on her reading, her son has become a middle school bully, and her mom tells her she has a long-lost sister. Following a group of suburban moms and their teenage children, Are We There Yet? poses the question, what do you do when your child is suddenly the problem child?

It took me over a month to finish Kathleen West's family drama which if you know me, is insanely long. While the drama is highly realistic (secret Instagram accounts and judgemental moms), I just struggled to want to read about it. To make matters worse, I don't feel like the moms really learned much from their experiences. They still seemed rather judgemental by the end of the book. To be honest, stories like this make we want to never give my kids cell phones.

Alice’s life is perfect. She loves her job & her hard-working husband, & her kids are incredible. So, when she goes out for coffee with her friend whose son is deemed a behavioral problem she always feels a bit smug. Deservedly so, she believes, until she gets a phone call from her son’s school that forces her to remove her rose-colored glasses and see her life for what it really is: imperfect, just like everyone else’s.

I'm a sucker for a good domestic drama, and this one had it all. Oblivious "not-my-child" parents and entitled children. There were times I was on the side of the parents, times I was supporting the kids, and times I hated them all 😂 The writing elicited a response from me at multiple times, and I absolutely love books that can make me react. There were a lot of characters in the book, and most took POV turns. I enjoyed seeing all the different perspectives. Overall, this was a timely & tidy drama about coming to terms with our reality.

Thank you to Berkeley for inviting me to read an advanced copy of this book!

Alice Sullivan is struggling. Her husband works at a law firm and is now flying to Ohio every week to work on a case that doesn't the home situation. Her boss is not showing her an equal partnership that was agreed upon when she was hired. Her daughter a second-grader she finds out is struggling in reading, and her son just starting middle school has been suspended for pulling down someone's pants at a school assembly and has a further suspension for calling his friend a slut when she spilled his deepest secrets, and on top of everything else she finds out her mom give her only biological child up for adoption at 19 and has now reunited and wants for all of them be a family. This is a multi-point of view book that was not hard to follow.