While this is actually a re release of Napolitano's debut, it feels fresh as ever. Napolitano has become a breakout star with her more recent books, but Within Arm's Reach is just as strong. She writes family like no other.

Ann Napolitano is an auto-buy author for me so when Penguin Random House reached out to offer me an advance copy of the re-release of her first book I absolutely jumped at the chance! I loved this book and it's amazing to see how her style as an author both has and hasn't changed over the decades. This one reminded me a lot of "Hello Beautiful" and featured the same type of layered, character-driven, intergenerational story. I appreciated how this book really dived into complicated family dynamics, not just between people who grew up together but also between pieces of the family with different belief systems and class status. This is a great read whether you are new to Napolitano's work or a fan like me and don't miss the author's note where she reflects on what it means to republish this work and what it means to her today.

family sagas are my favorite genre but this one didn’t really do it for me. lila had absolutely zero redeeming qualities and was so absurdly self centered that I got angry.

Heartbreak, Secrets, dysfunction ... Family

Whinin Arm's Reach is a story about a large, multi generational Family narrated by 6 points of views.

The story had me struggling to keep up with who's who, what's going etc which in turn didn't enable me to fully engage with plot nor character.

Loving Ms. Napolitano's LATER works, I was genially disappointed I wasn't able to fully enjoy this read, however I was able to capture moments within my journey.

Thank you Random House via Netgalley for providing me a copy.

#WithinArmsReach #NetGalley

Just like all of Ann Napolitano's books this one is very well written and thought out. It is a great family drama told in the POV's of different family members and one non family member. It mostly centers around Catharine, the mother and grandmother of the main family in the story. She has suffered loss in her life from her husband to a three year old daughter and still born twins. I think in her own right she just carries her sorrow inside herself and really does not communicate well with her children. Her children then, do not communicate well within their families or within themselves. Lila and Grace are two of the granddaughters. One is the writer of a "dear Abby" like column and one is a medical student. Lila, the medical student is very smart and has great grades but when it comes to compassion for her patients, she has none. Grace is very close with her Gramma but not that close with her mom. While reading this book I could think of many families who are probably like this one. There is the drama. Some of this drama is centered around an out of wedlock pregnancy. Also, fertility issues with another family member who really wants the baby from the unwed soon to be mother. Lila and Grace's parents are also having issues. The dad, Louis feels extremely guilty about one of his employees dying on the job. He takes to withdrawing from his wife Kelly and sleeping in the spare room. Kelly then, feeling unloved seeks fulfillment from another source. In some parts of this book it becomes awkward because you really want them to just communicate with each other. There is also more family drama and certain social aspects touched upon in this book. It is a sad book but it really touched my heart and I enjoyed reading this.
Thanks to #netgalley, #randomhousepublishing and @annnapolitano for an ARC of this great read.

Themed around three generations of Irish women, Within Arms Reach is a beautifully written story, and also Ann Napolitano’s first published novel. Given the author’s past two books Dear Edward and Hello Beautiful, I suspect the publisher decided to republish as a result of Ms Napolitano’s current success and popularity. I was glad to have the opportunity to read it. And it was quite good, just not as extraordinary as her later books. If I had read this first, I would undoubtedly been looking forward to future works.

Grandmother Catharine McLaughlin, matriarch of her clan, is mother of six offspring, three others having died early in life. Those were the times of of early deaths, high infant mortality and lack of modern medical advances. Her daughter Kelly, in her fifties, has not yet found herself. Her relationships with her two daughters, Lila, a medical student, and Gracie who is unmarried and pregnant, are stilted and awkward. They are emotionally estranged. The younger women feel a closer bond with their grandmother.

Written in Napolitano’s beautiful prose, her debut novel is a worthwhile read, although it is somewhat clumsy, having too many narrators, and so many characters, that I had to keeping stopping and backtracking to keep them in their places. Three and a half stars rounded up to four for Within Arms Reach. Thank you NetGalley and Random House for this advance readers copy in exchange for my review. Publication date is April 30, 2024.

Within Arm's Reach is a slice of life saga that follows a large, dysfunctional Irish Catholic family.  
 
This book revolves around an aging matriarch, Catharine, who is trying to correct generational mistakes that have led to a family in crisis with a granddaughter who is pregnant out of wedlock.
 
You are following a large cast of characters. When you've had 9 children, significant others, grandchildren and all the aspects of modern families, you are thrown a lot of names and a lot of who's who.
 
This book is very character driven. The problem arises when you are following 6 points of view. Although you get a feel for how the family works, you are not given enough time with each character to understand the reasons for their actions. I didn’t find myself rooting for any of them, which left me little reason to be invested in the story.
 
In some ways, I really connected with this book. Being raised in the Catholic church, I felt the author’s portrayal was accurate. She included a lot of the belief system that I was raised with. I also found Catharine’s perspective to be very believable.  I watched my grandfather move through the aging process. Entering an assisted living facility, breaking a hip and the gradual decline of his health, Catharine’s experiences in this book parallel what I watched happen to my own grandfather.
 
I also feel that this author tries to do too much. Every family has their issues, but it feels like she opened a drawer with the worst life can throw at you and dumped it into this book. PTSD, mental illness, depression, death, infertility, accidental pregnancy, etc. With so many problems within one family, it takes away the importance of these topics and desensitized me as the reader.
 
This book also lacked any visible personal growth. These characters didn’t seem any better off at the end of the story than at the beginning. I found the characters to be messy, flawed and sometimes toxic. They were full of contradictions. Worst of all, the matriarch thought bringing a child into this world was going to put the family back on solid ground. I don’t mind an ambiguous ending if it’s done well, but this book literally just ends. If you are looking for answers or resolutions, you won’t find them here.
 
Unfortunately, this book feels like a fantastic author’s debut novel. I read Dear Edward in 2020 and Hello Beautiful in 2023, which were both beautifully written books. This book does show how much the author has grown as a writer. I just didn’t find this one to be well executed. Each of her novels has shown her progression as an author. With that said, I will continue to read her books as they are published.

Within Arms Reach is a beautifully written family drama by Ann Napolitano. This book is a re-release of her first published novel from 20 years ago. In it, we follow three generations of a large Irish Catholic family as they navigate through life’s challenges, including an unexpected pregnancy. While not quite as good as her most recent novels, the well developed characters and their connections ring true.

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley for the advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

#bookstagram #readeveryday #bookreview #WithinArmsReach #NetGalley #fourstarread #RandomHouse #fiction

Thank you to NetGalley, Ann Napolitano and Random House Publishing for this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

First off, I did not do my research before requesting this book. It wasn’t until I was about a quarter of my way through the book that I realized this is a reprint/republished edition of a book that was originally released in 2004. Which was entirely my fault. But also made a lot of sense, as this book had little references to cell phones or other social media or any current pop culture references that you would find in a book published in 2024. My bad! I promise I can read! I just get so excited when I’m selected for an ARC, and don’t always look before I jump [into a book].

That being said, I think my mistake actually lends to the timelessness of this story. I would have been 12 when this book was first published, but now I’m almost 32, and this book hit home for me. That is not to say that I have a large dysfunctional family that is anything like the McLaughlin clan. But the Irish-American family wielding their Catholic guilt trips and the multigenerational trauma that is in no way addressed or worked through by the older generation but instead dumped on their children by way of passive-aggression and the stunting of emotional relationships is basically every millennial’s origin story. And so the relatable-ness of this story is what drove me to keep reading.

This is a very character-driven book, and the characters were so well-developed, I felt like I knew them. Maybe because I know people just like them, or maybe readers can find bits of themselves in these characters (I know I can). The characters all reflect the age-old idea that we never really know why someone acts the way they do – we never really get a chance to open up their mind for ourselves and dig deeper into their background, their mistakes, their trauma. But we all have the chance to learn and grow from our own mistakes. To break the generational trauma, to work on ourselves for the benefit of others.

I’m so happy that my first Ann Napolitano book was actually Ann Napolitano’s first book. Can’t wait to jump into some of her other (more current) books.

DNFd at 15%… the first chapter was so awful and triggering I genuinely couldn’t get past it. PLEASE check TW for this one…

thanks to Netgalley for the eArc of this book. I loved it. Told from multiple viewpoints, the reader really gets to know each of the characters. The plot and the characters stick with you and it is a book that you think about long after you close it.
I highly recommend!

This is a detailed, in deapth look at a multi generational Irish American family in New Jersey and the secrets and bonds that keep the together and push them apart. Siblings, spouses, cousins and grandparents all connect in this family and the overriding theme I found is how to make this next generation “better” from the errors and sins from the previous generation. So many secrets keep this family from sharing their truths and feelings with each other.
There are moments of beautiful writing. When they reflect on the desperation to fix the broken bonds between generations-especially Catherine. But overall I struggled with this book and it took me forever to finish. I just found most of the characters unlikeable. I found it about 30% too long and I lost internet. I appreciated her prose and the take on fixing the family errors before a family splits off and loses all ties to each other. I felt very connected personally to that theme. I did appreciate how she wrote the relationship between all the female generations, especially the cousins and how difficult each one was, it was incredibly honest.

Thank you to Random House and Ann Napolitano for the opportunity to read and review this book

This was my first experience with Ann Napolitano, & I was disappointed with this story. I had trouble keeping track of all the family members, & the plot didn’t keep me engaged. I’ll still give her other books a try & hope for better results. Thanks to NetGalley for an advanced copy of the ebook.

I will be upfront and say I had a hard time getting into this book and hated the characters. I requested this book because I had heard how good the author’s book “Hello Beautiful” was. I learned later that this book was actually the author’s first published book that was being re-released. The book read like it was supposed to be a memoir of a 4 generation family; instead of a work of fiction. I didn’t feel like there was a plot to the book other than sharing the plights of this very spoiled and dysfunctional family. Throughout the book, I kept repeating to myself “these people need therapy.” While it was not my favorite read, I have to give the author kudos for eliciting the anger I felt toward these characters. I would be willing to give another one of her books a try to see if I could get into it more.

⭐️⭐️/5

Thank you to the author and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This story follows the lives of a large Irish American family, told throughout several viewpoints. While I typically love family dramas, this one dragged a bit. I didn't feel a sense of connection to any of the main characters and it took quite a while to see redeeming qualities emerge from them. The last quarter of the book they seemed to finally let their walls down, come together in support of each other and demonstrate some character growth. I would have loved to see those ties strengthening throughout the book more.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

“Really knowing someone is too messy and disturbing and even tedious for my mother.” -Lila, about Kelly

Like all Napolitano novels, this is the story of a large family who struggles to love and accept themselves and one another.

Told via multiple POVs, we meet the McLaughlins, an Irish Catholic family in New Jersey, over the course of nine months in real time and backstory.

Catherine, the matriarch, is seeing visions: of her family, of old neighbors, of the dead and of the living. She knows she doesn’t have much time left to bring her family back together, but when the birth of a new, unexpected baby is announced, she knows this could be the catalyst.

Kelly, her oldest daughter, is stuck in a marriage that feels over. Her devoted husband Louis can’t forgive himself for an accident on his job site that took the life of a worker, and so as penance, he’s distanced himself from his already distant wife.

Then there are Kelly and Louis’ two daughters, Lila and Gracie. Lila, the smart one, the top of her class, the medical student, the cold and distant daughter, much like her mother. She goes through life robotically, unfeeling, until she sees what joy looks like in the most unexpected place and moves toward it. Gracie, the free spirit, the sexually promiscuous daughter, the feeling and feeling and feeling one. She moves through life pulling people in to push them away. She’s untethered and drowning in loneliness but refusing anything more.

The characters in Napolitano novels are difficult to like until perhaps the final 15 pages when they come together and realize some sense of humanity. This may be a reprint of her first novel, written when she was 29 years old, but it has similar themes and characterizations as Hello Beautiful that you’ll recognize them as hers.

It’s worth the read, though I prefer Dear Edward first, then Hello Beautiful, and finally this one.

Thanks to @netgalley and @avonbooks for the ARC to read and review. Available April 30, 2024.

My advice to those who read this republished version is to read the author’s note in the back first. I wish I had done that, This story of family learning to openly love and communicate was made so much more meaningful to me learning about the author’s family background to the characters.

you can tell that this is a reissuing of napolitano’s first novel pretty easily. sadly, this didn’t even come close to the beauty of hello beautiful and dear edward, and I found myself pretty bored a lot of the time. such a disappointment, but i’ll look forward to her next novel (that’s not a reissuing). i’d probably give this 2.5 stars because of the lack of entertaining plot and, honestly, lack of likeable characters (I feel pretty indifferent about them) - but i’ll round up for the sake of providing an even star rating.

I really struggled with what to do with this book. I was invited to read this one by the publisher, so I felt some sort of responsibility to try and make it through to the end, but at 20%, I found myself looking at reviews on NetGalley and Goodreads to see if it was worth continuing for me. When I saw that many other reviewers were having similar issues connecting to even one of the characters, I knew it may end up being a DNF for me. I slogged through 7% more before calling it. I really was disappointed, because Hello Beautiful was such a fantastic read, but this one just didn’t seem to have a driving story, and touched on topics that often ruin a story for me, including unironic religion-based judgement, as well as ghosts. This book was actually written two decades ago by the author, and it shows. I could see a certain type of reader, perhaps one who had more of a connection to motherhood and their faith, finding this a compelling read, but for me, even though this was an ARC and I really try not to DNF ARCs, I couldn’t justify spending my time reading a book that wasn’t bringing anything positive into my life.

This one was a bit meh for me. I loved this author's Dear Edward and her next two novels haven't lived up. The family drama was just a bit too much for me.