Dysfunctional family novel set on Cape Cod in the off season, told from alternating perspectives of various members of the family. This is a slow, melancholy novel but well-written. I often kind of wanted to shake the characters out of their moods and bad decisions, but they do feel very real. 3.5 stars.

This is kinda funny but, I really thought this book would be about the end of the world. I thought it would have some sort of apocalyptic event in it. It turns out I was wrong. It wasn’t a total disappointment, but that was a big let down.

THE NEWS AT THE END OF THE WORLD takes place over 4 days. The story features a few different POVs. There is Vance who has lost his job, his fiancé, and his place to live. He moves in with his brother Craig. Craig is a in a bad place. His love life isn’t turning out how he hoped it would. Gina, Craig’s wife, is unhappy as well and considering adultery. Amanda is Craig’s daughter from his first marriage, just found out she is pregnant. Amanda is everything to Vance as his first niece. Amanda is set on what she wants to do, but her father has other ideas.

This is a story that moves slowly. It does a good job of captivating this family in crisis. There are secrets everyone keeps. Some secrets can’t be kept. This story belongs mostly to Vance and Amanda as they traverse this difficult time. Amanda has to make a big choice, but she needs to tell her father first. Vance is there for her when she needs to trust someone. Everyone here has something they are hiding and it almost destroys them.

I loved the setting for this story, Cape Cod off season. I think all of the characters brought something important to the story, It is hard for me to say whose story I enjoyed most, but the person I thought about most was Craig. Although he comes off as the bad guy, he has made some tough choices for his family. Of course, he is the last to know about his daughter. The issue of teen pregnancy is dealt with in a realistic manner. Craig’s reasons made the most sense to me, but Amanda chooses to go another way.

The problem I had with this story, other than the fact that there was no apocalypse, is that nothing much got resolved in this story. Amanda makes her choice, every has a reaction, and that’s it. We find out what happened to Gina, but Craig and Vance don’t get an ending. I was really interested in this book while reading it, but now I can’t put my finger on why. It wasn’t a bad story, it just wasn’t the most interesting family drama. This is a character driven book mostly, so folks that enjoy that will find themselves loving this.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my unbiased opinion.

When Vance Lake loses his job and his fiancée at the same time, he retreats to his twin brother’s home in Cape Cod for lack of anywhere else to go. Vance’s brother, Craig, his family are facing crises of their own, and aren’t exactly welcoming Vance with open arms.

This story switches between the viewpoints of Vance; Craig; Craig’s wife, Gina; and Craig’s daughters, Amanda and Helen. It wasn’t a bad story, but it felt like the characters were doing everything they could to make themselves unlikeable so that I wouldn’t care what happened to them. The end of the book also felt very abrupt.

What is most disappointing about this book is the blurb above - it gives you most of the plot. The suspense that could be created by family members discovering each other’s secrets is diminished for the reader, as you already know what they are going to discover.

That being said, the characters are well developed through the switching of narrators. I was worried at the beginning that there would be too many points of view, but I was pleasantly surprised. This method allows the demons of the past to be slowly and deliberately revealed (despite the blurb). As a bonus for a Massachusetts resident, it was very easy to picture the characters in the novel as they travel throughout the Cape and to Boston.

There was also a bit of extra fluff in some of the chapters - I found my attention wandering at times, but for the most part the storyline progressed at a decent pace. And I was satisfied with the finish, how we leave the family.

This is a good novel about the struggles of one dysfunctional New England family to forgive the past and move forward.

3.5 stars from me.

**I received my copy via NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review. Thank you to the author and publisher for this opportunity.**

Was this ever a surprise. In hindsight, it has all the hallmarks of a novel I would enjoy: set in New England, family drama... well, yeah, that's about it. I expected a quick, good read, but I thought this reached "great" status in a few places. Sure, there were melodramatic scenes and rote plot twists--flirting between the wife and her husband's best friend, teenage daughter storming out to walk home, brothers fighting because you just don't understand me/but YOU just don't understand ME-- but I genuinely enjoyed the story and most of the characters, especially Amanda and Helen. A few moments were downright poignant. I liked it!

Contemporary
Adult
This is a stew of a family drama, and all the ingredients are there – sibling rivalry, teenaged drama, second marriages and flirty temptations. But it’s missing a little spice, resulting in a weeknight dinner offering rather than anything special. Forty-two-year-old Vance Lake is an adjunct prof who finds himself both homeless and jobless when he does something stupid at work. With no place to go, he lands on his twin brother’s doorstep in the middle of the night, unaware that Craig and Gina are coping poorly with their own family crisis. Daughter Amanda is home unexpectedly from South America, where she was sent in some strange kind of “punishment” for being caught with a joint in her senior year. Turns out she is pregnant, a big problem since she is just 17. Dad Craig is devastated, and it’s raising painful memories of Andrea’s own mother Suzanne, who died in a diving accident 10 years ago. He’s now married to Gina, who just gave birth to their second child. She is feeling less than attractive for the first time in her life, and is unable to resist when a family friend makes at pass at her. Author Miller alternates each character’s perspective, including that of seven-year-old Helen. Set over just four days in Cape Cod, the book offers a frank discussion of abortion but to be perfectly honest, it seems to me that all of these very white-bread people deserve their batch of troubles. It’s not that they are unlikable, but rather that they all seem quite immature. There’s no spark of life in any of them, no sense of joy or delight in life, and ultimately no reason for me to enjoy getting to know them. Kirkus described it as an “earnest” domestic drama, and that sums it up nicely. It’s not particularly awful; I just think there are better dramas out there. My thanks to publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for the advance reading copy provided in exchange for my honest review.
More discussion and reviews of this novel: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28114491

This was an ok read, but it was not one of my favorites. I always enjoy a good dysfunctional family book though, and this one does deliver on that!

The News from the End of the World is a glimpse into the lives of four members of a dysfunctional New England family, all of which are in personal crises at the same time. Very readable, the story is told from the alternating viewpoints of Craig Lake; his wife Gina; Craig's 17 year old daughter Amanda; and Vance, Craig's twin brother.

Vance arrives to stay at his brother's house after he was fired from his teaching position, and kicked out by his fiancée. He arrives not knowing that his brother's family is also going through crises, both individually, and as a family. Craig, a builder, is overextended and his business is floundering; Gina is on the brink of an affair; and Amanda was sent home from a program in Chile because she is pregnant. The book takes place over the course of four days during which we learn of regrets, hopes, and how messy a family that loves each other can be.

Miller does a good job of exploring each of these characters with empathy, and captures the angst of a pregnant teenager exquisitely. Two things bothered me about the book - it drove me crazy how long it took for Vance to be told the truth of Amanda's situation. Easily guessable, there was no need to drag it out as much as it was. I also wish the ending had been a bit more definitive. Leaves the reader to decide how the family moves forward.

Many thanks to Netgalley & Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for providing me with an e-Arc of this enjoyable book!

Unable to send to my Kindle so cannot review. It sounded very interesting and regret that I cannot read the advance reading copy. I will buy it when published.

Based on very little information about the author, I decided to request a copy of The News of the End of the World: I've had good luck with other novels from this publisher, I liked the cover, the setting (Cape Cod, in the off season), and the promise of dysfunctional family dynamics. Shortly after the first couple of paragraphs (a description of a dream), I decided that I'd made a good choice.

"When he opens his eyes it’s dark, and it takes a few moments for him to remember where he is - that he’s not at home, not with Celeste. He’s in his brother’s attic, sweating under an itchy army blanket that smells of mothballs, of the past. Only the heaviness he felt in the dream is real. As his eyes adjust he sees that the thing holding him down is a person: his niece, Helen, is sitting on his chest."

While the marketing blurb might suggest that the center of the drama is an unwanted teen pregnancy, none of the characters in this story are lacking in problems: Vance, the outsider, has returned to his hometown due to the unfortunate loss of both his job and his significant other; Craig, older brother, is struggling to make ends meet in his construction business and hiding it from his wife, Gina; Gina is contemplating adultery; her oldest daughter, Amanda, has returned home from an international study trip, pregnant; and then there's Helen, daughter of Craig and Gina, who is, understandably, trying to garner the attention of any adult that will listen.

"He struck her as so strong, so self-contained. He didn’t need to be coddled or taken care of like the men she’d been with before. But after a while - maybe when she was carrying Helen - she began to find herself feeling lonely and wishing that he needed her more."

The story is told in alternating voices and, while that can often be a challenge, Miller pulls it off with wise, and also hilarious, writing; I think she does a great job of reminding us that life is messy, no matter what we do to find an easier path, and that we are often faced with tough choices. I found this to be a highly relatable story and, when I wasn't chuckling at their antics and sarcasm, felt connected to the struggles of the Lake family.

A quick read, this would be a wonderful accompaniment on a vacation or long weekend; or, if you'd just like to escape to cozy New England while sitting in your own home.

I enjoyed the fresh and natural writing in this fiction, as well as Miller's charming characters and setting. The exploration of adult twin brothers is compelling to me as a reader, too. The book's cover is beautiful and engaging, too. I was drawn in on the first page by Miller's control of her polished and assured writing.