***Sandwich is another case of beautifully wrought complications and mutual adoration from Catherine Newman, with unapologetically contradictory and menopausal Rocky at the heart of the messy, wonderful extended family.***

Rocky's family has been vacationing in Cape Cod for twenty years. She's built years of happy memories in their low-key beach house rental.

This year, she's sandwiched between her half-grown children and her aging parents. And the carefree vacations of the past feel light years away, because Rocky's menopausal rage threatens to undo any joy she might gain from spending time in her favorite place.

To save their treasured family time together, Rocky may have to share secrets she never intended to reveal.

I love Catherine Newman! She writes characters that are so funny, so poignant, so beautifully oddball, and so wonderfully open about their deep adoration of their complex loved ones--and the frustrations and challenges that make up a perfectly imperfect life.

Rocky is menopausal and adjusting to her own shifts--in thinking, in physicality, in mood, and all--as she struggles to remember the joy of the past and accept the beauty in the present with her aging parents and her growing young-adult children.

Sandwich made me laugh, twisted my heart, and kept me interested throughout. I just adored all of the heart and humor in Sandwich.

I received a prepublication edition of this title courtesy of Harper and NetGalley.

Catherine Newman is also the author of other books I love: We All Want Impossible Things, Waiting for Birdy, and How to Be a Person: 65 Hugely Useful, Super-Important Skills to Learn Before You're Grown Up.

Told from a first-person perspective, which I absolutely love, this book spans a week in the lives of its characters, seamlessly moving between past and present. Typically, books with slower pacing tend to slow me down, but this one was exceptional. It’s a beautiful beach read about family, growth, and navigating life’s challenges together.

This was a five-star read that I'd make six stars if I could, just for the gift of having been able to read this IN the town of Sandwich on Cape Cod. Newman has crafted an elegant, perfect novel of motherhood and marriage, love and family, time and time and time and the passing of time. I adored every page.

Catherine Newman shares a family's week at the beach in "Sandwich," a great read for the summer.

Rocky, short for Rachel, finds herself sandwiched between her husband, two grown kids and a pair of aging parents in their humor-filled annual trip to Cape Cod. But now she's traded in kids' sand shoves for menopause and replaced snacks with wine. Sometimes she's sad. Other times she's happy for what's been -- and will be.

With its themes of love, family and motherhood, this is a fun read perfect for an afternoon under a beach umbrella.

This little book wrecked me. It made my heart expand while simultaneously breaking it. This was a meditation on motherhood and what that looks like through many stages. This is a meditation on being someone’s child and how that shapes and breaks our hearts. This was a book about life, love, fear and grief. It was a book about living. This was a gut punch and it will really stick with me. These characters, this setting, these words. It all really struck a cord with me.

Sandwich by Catherine Newman is a short character driven novel. The main character is Rocky, the mother of two twenty-something children, and 54 year-old wife. Every year this family visits the same vacation rental on Cape Cod for a week. This book only shows the family during this one week of vacation with the exception of a few flashbacks sprinkled in. Although this book is short, the pace moves slowly along. I didn’t feel connected to the story or characters through most of the book. Had it been a longer novel, I may have added it to the DNF stack. I have heard from several bookish friends that they did connect with this book which is why I decided to give it a try. It seems like although this book wasn’t much for me, many women did connect with it.

Thanks to NetGalley and Harper for this review digital copy.

Thank You NetGalley for the ARC. What a great book about family and a mother's journey through it all. This is my favorite book of the year.

I had such high hopes for this book based on the description and was very disappointed. I found myself cringing at some of the dialogue and conversations. This was nothing like any family vacation I have ever been on. I also had a hard time relating to the main character (and we are in the same stages of life) and honestly just really didn’t like her.

Having spent years taking family vacations to Sandwich in Cape Cod I was immediately drawn to this book on premise alone. I was then drawn in to a beautifully written story about family, aging, loss and most importantly, love. It was a beautiful “vacation” with a very realistic family - not perfect, but endearing.

Loved this book and recommending to others!

The prose in this book was incredible and beautiful. I enjoyed the weaving story between the present day and the past. The characters had great development, and it truly did not feel like fiction. It strikes a perfect balance between the seriousness of pregnancy, miscarriages, and the humor of what women have to experience.

If there is one book I would say people should read this summer, Sandwich by Cathrine Newman would be it.

A profound study of motherhood, womanhood, relationships, family, secrets & the choices that shape our lives, all taking place during a family’s annual vacation week on the Cape.

While short (only 226 pages) it packs a lot of emotion & nostalgia within its pages, reminding you that even the most small & mundane moments matter.

Where to even begin? I devoured this treat in one sitting! Never have I had a book so accurately depict exactly what I’m thinking and feeling. I laughed and cried and laughed again. This is one book that will stick with me for quite a while. I loved it!

thank you netgalley for the e-arc. sorry for the language but i fucking LOVED this book. i loved catherine's first book, we all want impossible things, and that one wrecked me. sandwich was just as good! i love the mundane details that move the story along...how each person likes their beach sandwich, the personality quirks you only get the perspective from rocky. the in between chapters looking into rocky and her husband's past trying to concieve were really beautiful.

I thoroughly enjoyed this (almost autobiographical?) novel by Catherine Newman. The reflections on middle age, menopause, motherhood, aging parents, newly adult children, marriage, and so much more was so real it was like looking over the author's shoulder as she wrote in her journal. Or even having someone write my own, to a certain extent.

If you are going through menopause or about to - this would be an amazing book for you! I am not (yet, hopefully not for another 15 years) and it scared me shitless, but I still enjoyed it immensely.
Ann Patchett recommends this book and her readers will feel a familiar pull here. Not a lot happens. We follow a family on their annual Cape Cod vacation and get flashbacks to some of the prior events. This is a book about family, women, fertility, aging, and body autonomy. It is funny and heartbreaking at times, and really well written. If you choose the audiobook, the narrator is lovely and did a wonderful job bringing all the characters to life.
It is not really about Sandwich, MA. Not like Hilderbrand’s books are about Nantucket. This story could happen on New Jersey shore, in Florida, or even San Francisco. But that’s beside the point, really. A lovely read, through and through.

This is the perfect summer book. Reading it with your eyes squinting from the bright sun outside and from the tears pooling in your eyes. This book feels like a hug, and then prompts you to hug your mother.

Sandwich by Catherine Newman is an ode to family, marriage, parents, children, grief and love.
It's funny, witty, and sad all at the same time.
It's a quick read and as I was nearing the end one passage 'got' me in all the feels: "Maybe grief is love imploding. Or maybe it's love expanding. I don't know. I just know you can't create loss to preempt loss because it doesn't work that way. So you might as well love as much as you can. And recklessly. Like it's your last resort, because it is."
This book should particularly resonate with mothers of grown children.

A woman and her family vacation at the same beach house every year. She is middle aged with twenty something children and aging parents (hence the title, she is sandwiched in her family.) The book takes place over the week of their annual trip as Rocky reflects on her life and what's to come.

This is a book where very little happens. They go to the beach. She thinks about her time when her kids were little. She makes sandwiches. There is LOTS of talk about menopause and intergenerational sex talk that I could have done without. I think I would have enjoyed this book more without all the sex and sexual organ and function talk (it is sprinkled throughout and was just a turn off for me.) Perhaps I am not quite old enough to have been the proper audience for this book. Overall, this was ok and luckily not too long but it did not live up to the hype for me.

Thank you to Netgalley for the advance copy for review.

Sandwich is the story of Rocky, a mother, daughter, wife, and a woman going through menopause, on vacation with her adult children and aging parents in Cape Code. A someone who grew up doing the weekly beach vacation, I absolutely loved how it was broken down by days, the description of their rental, and the various feelings while you're on vacation. While I have young children, I could relate to so much in Rocky, especially as she described the early days with her kids. Catherine Newman writes in an almost stream of consciousness way that you can feel the chaos and sadness going on inside Rocky. A beautiful, well written book.

Sandwich tells the story of a 50-something year old woman named Rocky on a family vacation in Cape Cod with her grown children and her elderly parents. This one week vacation evokes memories of past vacations, life experiences, parenting small children, complexities of marriage, and the joys and hardships of the female body.

Though I jokingly celebrate my 27th birthday every year, it’s time to confess that I’m far from my 20s. My 50s are just around the corner. And with that has come so many weird changes that no one ever warned me about. That being said, I’m also the mom that got to hear the words “geriatric pregnancy” a lot—a term that should be banned in my opinion. Surely we can come up with something better? I digress. Hearing that term means my three kids are on the younger side. So, parts of this book resonated with me—those not-so-fun effects of growing older—but I’ve not quite reached the grown children stage. I’m currently in the vacationing with small children phase and I’m really tired.

While I was able to relate to so much of this book, ultimately I was left a bit conflicted. It was humorous and emotional and I enjoyed the story. Unfortunately, some of the characters just didn’t work for me and, at times, it seemed a bit outrageous. But what I did appreciate is the honest look at everything a woman’s body endures. Goodness, it’s a lot. And Rocky’s story really expresses all the changes, physical and mental, that we are supposed to just deal with quietly. And I’m really tired of dealing with all of it quietly. This book gave me a lot to think about and I certainly enjoyed that aspect of it.

Thanks to @netgalley and @harperbooks for the advanced e-galley in exchange for my honest review.