It kept my interest I suppose, but it was such a slow burn that I spent a good chunk of the time wondering where it was going, and not in an edge of my seat kind of way. Some of the reveals were pretty good, but then those felt negated by everything being tidied up perfectly in a neat little now afterward. I'm a sucker for a happy ending, but everything felt too.... Convenient.

Captivating narration about an unconventional family and their conventional family problems.

I especially enjoyed the narrator and the chronology of the story. Even though Phoebee the latecomer told the story, we aren’t formally introduced to her until the end, which is very fitting according to her status in her family.

The layers of art, race, and religion were dynamic and the character arcs were intimate and well timed. I learned from each character as they learned about themselves.

This is a phenomenal book!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher Celedon for early access to this title. Unfortunately, this book fell flat for me. While I typically struggle to get into a character-driven novel, I'm usually able to and end up enjoying them a lot. But, I felt like I was never able to engage with this one and ended up nearly DNFing it around 60% in. It felt like not much was happening and it felt very long-winded. I struggled to like any of the main characters which made it hard to want to continue to read on. I did end up liking how it ended but overall was not a title for me. I do think that family drama readers will really enjoy this one and the premise it is set on.

The Latecomer is a family drama about a family that doesn't particularly care for each other. We have triplets by in vitro that don't even tell others they are a triplet or that their sibling attends the same university. We have a father who puts his energy and time into collecting art and another woman. The mother does her best under the circumstances and tries to act like they are one happy family.

This is a hefty book at 448 pages where not a lot happens, but it's more of a deep dive into this family. For me, it was very long winded and dragged at times. I didn't particularly care for any of the characters except for Phoebe, the latecomer child.

I did quite enjoy how the book wrapped up but all in all, I question whether the length was necessary to tell this story. Of course I completely enjoyed listening to There were some topics in this book that bothered me, which I think also affects my rating.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for the advance audiobook.

Jean Hanff Korelitz is becoming a favorite author, this is the third book I have read by this author, liked all of them but this is by far my favorite. This story is about a wealthy New York family, the Oppenheimers, who, thanks to IVF, eventually have 4 viable embryos, Johanna, mom, decides to have three of the four eggs implanted and gives birth to triplets. Her biggest wish and desire is for these three children to have a strong family bond and love each other. Actually though, just the opposite happens, the three really cannot stand each other as people. With dad, Salo, involved with his art and the triplets leaving for college, Johanna decides to unfreeze embryo number 4 and have another child. Kind of weird, right? I just loved the writing and family dynamics from each of the children's point of view. I heard the author speak and love that Steve Martin, being a huge art collector, influenced her choice of artists to talk about in the story as well. Readers who enjoy family dramas, like 'The Most Fun We Ever Had and 'Ask Again, Yes' will love this one. #TheLatecomerBook @CeladonBooks May 2022 Pub Date 5 stars

This book rubbed me the wrong way about serval topics. It started off interestingly enough about the family dynamics of a wealthy, New York, Jewish family. Where the book started to loose me is a lot of comments are made about the IVF process of the families triplets and later 4th child. The author places such an emphasis on these children who don't feel like triplets because they were just randomly chosen embryos. Later in the book they make a big deal about the 4th child and how she is "the same age" as her triplet siblings just held back in a freezer for 17 years. It's all so very strange and I feel like it's extremely insulting to children born from IVF and their parents. I have no personal experience with any of this but it all just felt very icky and strange hearing them speak in this manner about their births. There were lots of great ideas in this book but they didn't come together for me in the novel. It was not for me. I appreciate the advanced copy from #Netgalley and #MacmillanAudio

Yeah no. I really only finish this because I got it from NetGalley. I would have DNF it in the first chapter otherwise.

Yay! Loved this latest novel by Korelitz following last year’s The Plot. I can’t get enough of a dysfunctional family saga and this one is superbly well-plotted. The pace slows a bit in the middle section, but everything comes together with a very satisfying ending.

Narration was spot on.

This is the story of family, or perhaps more aptly put the components of a family.

Told in three parts The Latecomer is an exploration of a disjointed, dysfunctional family and each individuals path through life. It is a winding story, written in a style not to be binged, but one to be savored.

We start with Salo Oppenheimer and an unfortunate event that sets his life down a certain path and ultimately to his wife, Johanna. We learn about her dreams to fix him after the tragedy of the past and his apathy towards most everything in life until he discovers art. We get a mini-history of NYC that I think people familiar with the area will appreciate. We get some art lessons, especially in outsider art. We also learn of Johanna and her dream of become a mother and struggle along with her to become pregnant and ultimately securing her status as a mother through IVF.

We then move to the children. The triplets conceived via IVF, and the apples of their mother's eye. Her dream come to fruition, their closeness practically guaranteed because it was as she wished; except for the fact that they, from the start, wanted nothing to do with one another. "They were five humans cohabiting. They were not, and never had been a family". Each off on their own path and separating themselves from the pack in their own way. Harrison worked to start separating himself from the womb. Sally and Lewyn (the two that might have had a thread of connection) end up neighbors in college yet they exist completely independent of one another severing the final chance at connection.

Finally we enter the final part, The Latecomer. When the 3 embryos were implanted in Johanna the luck of the draw left one viable embryo behind. As she faced a major turning point in her life Johanna threw one last hail mary for her family and the last embryo was implanted in a surrogate. Phoebe is the final piece of the family puzzle for the Oppenheimers, but how will her presence impact the pieces of the family she was born into.

The book is truly a character study of 6 separate pieces of a family and how they came to be who they are in life. The book looks at so many elements of the human experience. Themes include gender, race, sexuality, grief, infidelity, privilege, religion and while it is a lot it never feels rushed, it feels authentic and real. The characters are flawed and largely unlikable but yet I didn't want to leave them when I finished the book.

I give this book the 5 stars after marinating on it. I 100% know this book will not be for everyone. It is a commitment at just under 500 pages, and it is not a fast moving story. It is wordy and will bore some readers. However, if you can commit to the Oppenheimers and their stories you will be taken on a journey through the years and phases of their "family" and provided with plenty of opportunities to ponder the choices made through the years.

The amazing story is brought to life by the always amazing Julia Whelan and I highly recommend the audio version for anyone considering it.

There are a lot of positive reviews out there for this novel, so by all means, give it a go, but for me, I found The Latecomer at 16+ hours to be a challenging listen.

Salo and Johanna Oppenheimer, a couple with an enormous amount of family money, require fertility treatments to have children, an unwavering goal for at least Johanna who dreams before, during and after pregnancy that she will forge a family bonded by genetics and love for all eternity.

Because of their wealth, fertility treatments repeatedly occur until the last one where four eggs are harvested, and three successfully implanted. The fourth remains stored for decades until empty nest drives Johanna back to that remaining egg for which she’d paid years and years of storage fees never knowing why she continued to pay.

This family exhibit no signs of familial love, care, concern or any actual positive emotions towards one another. Johanna wants it, tries to convince herself the triplets will be there for one another, but there is literally zero indication that this group is anything other than pretentious wealth with all the privileges surrounded by art and money and lacking in humanity.

It is hard to like a book when you do not like any of the characters. At least for me as a reader I need to care what happens and I did not connect with any of them.

The baggage I brought as a reader likely influenced my opinion heavily. I was a woman who required fertility assistance to bear two pregnancies. I was a woman who was raised in a completely dysfunctional, unloving, disconnected family like the Oppenheimers (but add crushing poverty to that mix) where four children existed as four only children with no bonding. The Latecomer stepped on a nerve for me and I was clearly not the intended audience for this novel. Again, tons of pre-release reviews rave about the book, and as a fan of the author’s earlier work, The Plot, I’d encourage you to read this if you think you can stay in for the long haul with characters with many faults and foibles.

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for gifting me an Advanced Listener’s Copy of The Latecomer. In exchange I offer my unbiased review.

So life goes…

This book covers all the messy, complicated, dysfunctional ways families and siblings hurt each other but also reminds us that we don’t get to chose the people we share our DNA with. I LOVED being immersed in the thorny branches of the Oppenheimer clan but TIGHTER editing was very much needed!!! This would have been 5 stars but I spent way too much time tangled in unnecessary prose. The audio narration by Julia Whelan was outstanding 🙌🏻‼️♥️

More family drama! This seems to be the summer flavor du jour. The last four books I’ve read for review all involve messy relationships, family secrets, multiple siblings, grief, resentment, privilege, wealth, motherhood, identity and honestly, I’m here for all of it!!!! For me, this book by Jean Hanff Korelitz is the best of the bunch. It’s a rather slow paced, nuanced character study with many layers and terrific prose. Hanff Korelitz is a gifted writer and skilled storyteller. My only complaint; this book took too many winding detours.

This is one of those middle of the road reads for me, I didn’t dislike it but I also didn’t love it either. I appreciate what the author was doing and knew what she was trying to say but it too way too long to get there and it was a slog for me to get through it. The Oppenheimer family was full of unlikable people and hearing them whine and behave terribly became grating for me quickly. I’m one hundred percent sure that I would have given up on this one but since I listened to the audio version and Julia Whelan narrates I was drawn in enough by her amazing performance I stuck it out. I seem to be in the minority here though so take my review with a grain of salt. I was also an outlier with my thoughts on The Most Fun We Ever Had so I think these dense and wordy family stories are maybe just not for me.

I was so happy to receive an ALC of The Latecomer from Macmillan Audio! Celadon generously sent me a physical copy, and it took me a LONG time to get through. The story was entirely character-driven, with not much plot, which isn't usually my preference. After struggling through the physical copy for a really long time, I finally received an ALC and was able to fly through the ending. I think I would have liked it a lot more if I listened from the start!

The book starts in the past, and narrates every detail of the Oppenheimer family's lives--the parents, then the children. The final "part" of the book is set in the present, and the tone changes completely. There was a whole lot of slogging backstory, but ultimately an enjoyable ending. The last POV really brought everything together, and if it had read like the final part from the start I would have liked it a lot more.

In the "past" POVs, the way the narrator referred to "our parents" was jarring. They'd list Sally, Lewyn, Harrison, and the baby all by name and then say "our mother" in the same sentence, so whose voice was I reading? It just didn't feel smooth (this was resolved and made sense at the end, but was still hard to read).

I liked the story overall, but the way it was written didn't do it for me. It was hard to concentrate on all the backstory without knowing what the point was. However, readers who enjoy a character-driven novel should really enjoy it!

I have liked this author's past works, so I will certainly read future books by her, but this one unfortunately wasn't my favorite.

Audio Review: As mentioned above, I greatly preferred the audiobook to read this one. First of all, Julia Whelan is one of my favorite narrators. She did a great job of helping me feel engaged with the story. She brought these characters to life, and made their backstory interesting instead of arduous. I love having multiple formats of books for this exact reason--if I'm not loving a book I'm reading, sometimes listening helps and vice versa.

An intensely deep, well executed, character study of a family drama. Wipe clean from your mind all remnants of the authors last release, “The Plot”, and go into this open minded. Some of the characters were quite unlikeable at times, but that only seemed to emphasize how very “real” they felt. This was the epitome of a slow burn story, perhaps even a little wordy in places. However, I could’ve listened to hours more of this story with the incredible Julia Whelan narrating.

This was so, so good. Great characters, interesting scenarios, and very clever social commentary.


Review copy provided by publisher.

I enjoyed this one! It started off kinda slow but once it picked up I really started enjoying it. Recommend!

4 stars

This book is a commitment: one I'm glad I kept and one I'm certain I'd have broken early if not for the tremendous benefit of having the audio version. I had constantly conflicting feelings about the flow and characters, and the expert narration and logistically easier (than reading by sight) audio format afforded me the opportunity - and desire - to speed through this meaty text in just over 24 hours.

Ironically, the reason I didn't jump at earlier chances to read this is the New Adult branding, and while I get why that's present, this feels much more aptly placed in general fiction. The novel is about several new adult characters at different points, but it isn't ONLY or even mostly about them. The layered approaches to family, chance, and convenient connections are all more interesting and central components.

The novel begins with the meeting and subsequent marriage of the parents, Salo and Johanna, and moves through their difficult marriage. One of the early highlights of this partnership is the IVF treatment that finally offers them triplets. These triplets take all of the joy out of family and out of having siblings. Each one is troubled. They lie, they're malicious, and then there is Harrison, who is the actual worst (and you can find out how I define that by hating him yourself - or being wrong). Readers follow the family as the triplets move through high school and finally on to college, when we receive the greatest gift of the novel: a character I won't name here. I'd read a sequel following this character in a heartbeat. One particularly unusual twist occurs when a fourth Oppenheimer sibling appears, and while this character can be seen as the titular "Latecomer" for obvious reasons, this character isn't the only one to whom this term applies. There are other important ancillary characters and events that populate this long road to understanding, and several create meaningful imprints on one or more Oppenheimers (which, so you know, is *NOT* a common name).

There is a lot of content to manage here, and while this factor does - at times - help readers connect to the characters, it can also become distracting. The book FEELS long more so because of what seem like extraneous details than what is simply a long period of family history. Most frustratingly, there are some conveniences and connections that are just a bit over the top. Even when readers' dreams come true in some of these areas, it's a bit much in some cases.

The ideal reader of this book will (1) commit to sticking with it, (2) get the audio version, and (3) identify and track the heroes and villains. There's an intriguing payoff to be had for folks who can make it, but expect it to be subtle versus sweeping.

The Latecomer tells the story of the wealthy Oppenheimer family across multiple generations and decades. The parents Salo and Johanna were brought together because of a horrific accident and eventually married and had triplets thanks to IVF.

The first part of the story focuses on the parents, the second part is told from the triplets perspective (Harrison, Lewyn and Sally) and walks us through their adolescent and college age years, and the third part is told from the perspective of "The Latecomer" or the 4th sibling born many years after her triplet siblings.

I was instantly intrigued by the first part even though it was VERY detailed and some descriptions got a little monotonous. The second part more or less irritated me as it was told from the perspective of bratty rich college kids. The third and final part tied it all together from me as Phoebe (The Latecomer) was the only character that I actually cared about.

I do wish the characters could have been a little more likable, but they we're all portrayed in such a negative light that I wasn't rooting for anyone. Usually family dramas make me feel al the emotions and this one was pretty emotionless for me.

If you read and enjoyed the plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz like I did, please be aware that this is MUCH different than that in genre, length, etc. I still find her writing to be so incredible and will continue to read whatever she puts out in the future.

Julia Whelan is my all-time favorite narrator and I would recommend this on audio over reading a physical copy.

Thank you so much to MacMillan Audio for the ALC of this book, It will be available for purchase on May 31st.

Rating: 3.5/5