Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for my ARC in exchange for my honest review. This book will be published February 27, 2024.

This is the first book I’ve read by this very popular author. I knew the subject matter would be difficult, but I was pleasantly surprised by the beauty of the words the author chose. Some sentences literally took my breath away.

“He wondered sometimes if he missed the Annieness of Annie, or just that feeling of home.”

“But maybe mad is just to cover up the other feelings. Maybe mad is just sad in disguise.”

“One need never be ashamed or afraid of grieving. Those who do not grieve cannot feel.”

Grief is portrayed very realistically but I felt there were too many subplots that distracted from the main story: Annie’s best friend who is a drug addict and a girl at school who experienced sexual abuse. I think I would have preferred the story to just be about Bill and the 4 children and how they grew and changed over the year following Annie’s death.

It's been a minutes since I have read anything by Anna Quindlen. Wow, what an incredible writer. This is a sad book, so if that's not your vibe, this won't be for you. It follows the death of Annie through the seasons with perspectives from her eldest daughter, husband, and best friend. The characters are rich and robust. But, the book felt too long to me.

Rounding up from 3.5 stars.

Thank you Netgalley & Random House Publishing Group - Random House for the advanced reader copy.

I rarely give 5 star reviews but this beautiful book gets one from me. It is such a raw look into different kinds for grief. As someone who has lost my mother I really understood Ali's chapters. It was almost hard to read and beautiful at the same time. I highlighted many sentences and just sat afterwards and thought about this book and these people. Wonderful

Author Anna Quindlen is a master of putting pen to paper and expressing deeply held human emotions in a manner that makes sense to the reader. Annie Brown is a young, vibrant mother that is suddenly stricken down by an aneurism leaving behind her husband Bill, four young children and her best friend. Beautifully written and deeply moving this story is about day to day life, how grief and unexpected losses affect our lives from the perspective of each of the story’s characters. I highly recommend this book to everyone who loves their family and friends. This book will stay with me for a long time. This ARC was provided by Random House Publishing via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

DNF- read about half the novel. This is a character study of the effects of a sudden death of a thirty something mom. Stories from her husband, eldest child and past friend are related throughout the following year. I found the slow pace and confusing as the story continually flips from present to past and back again.

Good story for high school and above. Annie dies suddenly and the story takes place for the year after her death and how those around her handle their grief.

Solid three stars.

When Annie, pregnant with her first child, married high school boyfriend turned plumber, she wanted nothing more than the secure comfort of her family and to provide nurturance to the residents in her care as an attendant in a nursing home. Her best friend, Annemarie, wanted more and after graduating from college, developed a successful business. When Annie dies unexpectedly with four young children, her family tumbles into grief and chaos, as does Annemarie. Their pain is palpable as the reader spends a year with the family and friend, experiencing how they learn to cope with their bereavement.

Anna Quindlen is a skilled writer. I have loved everything I have read by her, this being no exception. The story is both sad and uplifting and I suspect will result in many readers taking an introspective look at loss in their own lives.
Written with poignancy and compassion, Quindlen displays insight into the thoughts, feelings and actions of people grappling with and living their lives. As in some of her other works, she portrays well the experience and vibe of living in a small town.

There are some heavy topics here: death, child abuse, substance abuse. They are dealt with realistically and sensitively.

I recommend this book for fans of literary fiction/ women’s fiction and for those who want to make a foray into these genres.

I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Anna Quindlen never disappoints. Annie, a wife and mother of 4, dies of an aneurysm. The family that centered around her falls apart. With help from loving friends, they manage to regroup. The story is both heartbreaking and inspiring. I miss Annie.

I must admit, I really thought I was going to absolutely adore Anna Quindlen's latest book, After Annie. Unfortunately, adore is a little too strong a praise. I did, however, like it very much. I enjoyed the characters (mostly Ali), the relationships throughout, and the backstory between the two best friends, Annie and Annemarie. In my opinion, however, a lot of the storyline could have been written more succinctly, leaving some things to the reader's imagination or not introducing portions of the narrative at all. The seasons seemed to drag on, without much happening. However, I know that this is a lot like grief and life, in real-time, and I feel certain this was of Ms. Quindlen's choosing.

After Annie was a heartbreaking and heartwarming story about how a family survives and begins to thrive in the year after a mother of four young children collapses one evening and dies suddenly. I wish it had delved a little deeper into how the two younger children were adapting and I also wish it had continued just a bit longer as things were just getting better as the book ended. Maybe a brief epilogue. Overall, a beautiful story of surviving trauma.

After Annie is heartbreakingly sad, yet filled with hope. It is one of the best character driven novels I have read. It is a superbly written book about the impact of the sudden death of a woman on the lives of her husband, children and closest friend. It’s a look into the daily lives of a family struggling to recover from the loss of the person who held the family together. The balance of life and death, family and friendship, love and loss in this story is remarkable. Death is very sad, but so is living after a loved one dies. While grieving, we learn to find the bright spots along the way; people, places and experiences that fill those broken places with hope and love. I would like to thank Netgalley, the publisher and the author for providing me with a review copy in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion of this book.

The conventional wisdom says don’t make any major decisions the first year after the death of a loved one. The reader can understand why in the family novel, “After Annie,” in which author Anna Quindlen chronicles the first twelve months of widower Bill Brown and his four children (ages 6-13) following the loss of their wife and mother. Best friend, Annemarie, also feels Annie’s absence keenly, whom she depended on to maintain her sobriety.

Annie, age 37, dies unexpectedly in the first chapter from a brain aneurysm. Annie didn’t complete college; she married young and worked as an aide in a nursing home. Each chapter corresponds to a season beginning with Annie’s death in February and concluding with the first anniversary a year later. We see eldest daughter, Ali, taking on adult responsibilities at home, caring for her dad and siblings, while wondering “what’s the point of grown-ups if they can’t fix things?”

The next oldest child, a boy, starts acting out. The littlest ones revert to bedwetting and crying. Meanwhile, husband, Bill, buries himself in his plumbing business and doesn’t know how to emotionally connect with his grieving children. The characters are realistic and well-developed. As they struggle and grow, we also get a portrait of Annie herself.

While much of the story is serious, there are moments of droll humor. (E.g. “It seemed as though there were only four or five options in the funeral meals cookbook, all of them involving pasta or cheese.”) What struck me the most was seeing the gaping hole left by a seeming insignificant and ordinary life. But then, “there are no ordinary people,” according to C.S. Lewis.

Anna Quindlen fleshes out in fiction what Elisabeth Kubler-Ross describes in non-fiction. Along the way, I gained a better understanding of grief and how to interact with those experiencing it. This title will be great for book clubs.

Anna Quidlen has a writing style for sure, she is deeply character based annd can make even the most mundane things seem inportant and thougtful. This book is no different. Told in 3 difernt points of view we get the life, and the fall out of her death, of Annie who ides too younng and left behind so many. This is not a book of action and subterfuge, it is a story about people and the way they interact, love and suffer loss.

Annie, preparing supper for her family, asks her husband Bill for an Advil. Before he can get it for her she falls to the floor, dead from an apparent aneurysm.

The rest of the story describes how her husband deals with his grief. The four children, ages, 6, 8, 11 and 13 are also trying to work their way through the loss of their mother. Bill, the father, loses sight of his own family as he is sunk into his own morass of grief. Ali, the eldest, is forced to take on responsibilities far beyond her coping level. Ant, 11, acts out his grief and the two little ones just want Mom to come back. Annie's best friend struggles with issues that Annie had helped her work through.

Quindlen's ability to get us inside her characters is one of the things that makes her books stand out. This story is no exception.

I just love this author. As I was reading her new book, I kept asking myself, has Anna recently lost someone very dear? How else does she have her finger on the pulse of how each individual family member will react? How does she reach into their psyche and understand each person’s unique response to death? She definitely hits you in the heart.
Ali is the oldest of four siblings. She has great parents. Both are attentive, loving, and stay active in their children's lives. Until dinner one evening, when everything changes in the blink of an eye.
Ali, her three brothers, her father, and her mother’s best friend are each studied in this novel about human emotion. I couldn’t read it fast enough. There was never a point where I rolled my eyes and disagreed with the author. I finished and felt like I knew this family. They’re real, they may live down the street. Those are the signs of a very well-written contemporary novel.
Thanks so much to Random House Publishing Group- Random House for an ARC in exchange for my honest review. The publishing date is February 27, 2024.

After Annie
Anna Quindlen (Author)
(This review is based on an ARC sent to me by NetGalley)

When Annie Brown dies suddenly, her husband, her children, and her closest friend Annemarie are left to find a way forward without the woman who has been the glue that has kept the family together.
Annie’s husband Bill Is devastated and feels paralyzed as Annie was the center of the family’s lives. Her husband is overwhelmed with four children to raise, and turns to his teenage daughter for help,
It is told from three points of view, the oldest daughter Ali (13), the husband Bill and the best friend Annemarie.
Ali, the eldest of Annie's children, has to grow up overnight, to care for her younger brothers and even her father and to puzzle out for herself many of the mysteries of adult life.
Over the next year all three are able to change with the memories of Annie and to grow stronger. The enduring power of love allows them to go on without her.

After Annie by Anna Quindlen is a very good novel about the sudden death of the mother of a family and how this death affects all the family members. There are many lessons to learn from this insightful novel. How does one go on when the mother is no longer there to provide support and love to her husband and children? What does life look like for this family after Annie, the mother, is no longer living? When is it alright to be happy again? This novel deals with the very emotional problems relating to death in a real and honest way. After Annie is well worth reading. Thank you to Anna Quindlen and Penguin Random House for allowing me to read this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review .

Grief hangs heavy in the house, After Annie. The untimely death of Annie yields this story of her family and her best friend as they navigate the months after her death. Her daughter, at age 13, along with her three sons are bereft from her loss. Annie and Bill married after a short courtship, to the dismay of some of their extended family. But, they were a great pair and Bill is lost without her. He has to keep his job going for the family and figure out how to move forward. Best friend, AnneMarie, a recovering addict, takes it especially hard. This is a gritty story about how the family moves through the days, weeks and months after her death.

This slice-of-life novel follows the aftermath of a sudden death in a family, slowly following most of the family members as they navigate grief, memory, and other huge unrelated challenges in their lives. It starts off extremely slowly, the death and immediate aftermath taking up more than the first third of the story, but as we grow to learn more about and to understand the characters, it becomes more page-turning and engrossing.

A sad, dark story, it does ultimately end on a hopeful note, but it takes a long time to get there. Parts of it were very dark and depressing, and would probably be triggering for those who have experienced similar situations.

I did ultimately like this story, and never was not enjoying myself, but most of the time it was a tough read. It is very well-written and characters were well-drawn, so it never felt like a slog.

I really loved After Annie. At first I was nervous because it started off so sad. But I got sucked into this family and couldn’t put the book down. I needed to see how it would work out for all of them. I loved reading from all the perspectives. It was so well-written as I expected from Anna Quindlen. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read this book.