Brashares can hook her readers in even with multiple POVs and scenery stealing locations. Characters usually do not get overwhelmed by her stylized and switcheroo narration. However, in The Whole Thing Together, plotting that otherwise seems pretty ideal for romance gets lost in the shadowed, and loosely developed storylines -- of which there are many perspectives. Maybe that's why the entire book felt off. As someone who adored Brashares 'Traveling Pants' multiple narration, her lack of cohesive, readable narrative here stood out to me. Comparison can breed contempt, and that could be why The Whole Thing Together fell flat. Overdramatic, a tad stereotypical, some distressing racist and sexist content that younger readers might not quite understand in the context and a definite confusion as to why this book is classified YA and not New Adult or just Fiction; I had a hard time completing this one without thinking how much better Ann Brashares' other books have been and how more worthy of a reread they are than forcing myself to like this one.

Perfect story as always from the author. I loved the originality of the premise. Will highly recommend to readers!

This story did not grab my attention by any means. It quickly jumps between perspectives so much so that I felt disconnected from the large cast of characters. I would not recommend this book. It used profanity frequently and needlessly. The story did not get interesting until about the last 20% and that is too long to wait for a story.

There was a lot I appreciated about The Whole Thing Together. I loved the blended family and liked the way the story unfolded, especially in the beginning. I also loved the different points of view, at least in theory. In the end, all the voices started to blur together for me. They sounded very similar so it was hard to keep up with whose head I was in. It was also harder to stay invested in each individual voice.

This book started out making me want to stop reading. Contemporary, drama filled YA books don't usually pique my interest, but I told myself I would read at least a few more chapters, enough to do a review and explain why I didn't finish it. And here I am, reviewing it after completing it. Yes. I ended up enjoying it. I guess it kind of hit me deeper than I thought it would.

This is essentially a family drama, mixed in with secrets and some YA romance. The story centers around a summer home that is shared by two families. Robert and Evie and their daughter Sasha, as well as Robert's daughters Emma, Mattie, and Quinn, live there every other week. The other weeks it is occupied by Lila and Adam, along with their son Ray, and again Emma, Mattie, and Quinn. The story tends to shift perspectives quite often so you can get a feel for each and every person. In between of all the drama that revolves around the hatred that Lila and Robert have for one another, there is a romance developing between Sasha and Ray. Two members of the same family, but not related. Two people who share the same bed, the same bedroom, but have never actually met. This is the part of the story that intrigued me the most. What would seem kind of strange and upsetting to people, made me feel good. This romance just shows me that something special can find you where ever you are and whatever kind of messed up circumstances you are in, and that it why I adored this book.

Well-written account of young love and the meaning of family. Perfect summer read

I really enjoyed this story. I've never read anything by this author before and loved how she brought these characters to life. I also loved how we got to hear from all of the kids who were affected by this torturous relationship between Lila and Robert. All of the kids deal with it in different ways but it is clear that it has shaped each of their personalities in dramatic ways. I spent most of this story being so mad at Lila and Robert for not seeing what they were putting their kids through. Sasha and Ray were stuck in the middle of it all. I felt sorry for them the most. And I totally rooted for them to meet each other and form a bridge between these two warring sides. However, I did not expect the fallout that would come from the two sides finally getting everything out in the open. This book had so many surprising twists. I could not put it down. It was the perfect summer read for fans of Jodi Picoult and Nicholas Sparks.

This book was a hard one for me. The issues and struggles that the writer portrays are important but unfortunately, the way they were written leaves much to the imagination. I found myself floundering a lot and I couldn't really figure out why, and then it hit me - these were horrible, selfish characters thrown into a convoluted plot line. This is why I couldn't connect.

The Whole Thing Together is a family drama - heavy on the drama. There were two people who were married and had 3 girls, then they divorced and each remarried and had other children. The divorced parents HATE each other (they constantly show this) and don't talk. But they share a summer house every year - one week at a time. Yes, you read that right. One week it's the moms, the next it's the dads, then its the moms, then its the dads...This made no sense to me at all. Talk about disruptive.

This story focuses heavily on Sasha and Ray - the kids of the parents new marriage. Sasha from the dad and Ray from the mom. But they aren't related (they tell us all the time). But yet, they share the same bedroom at the summer house, not at the same time of course, and feel like they know each other even though they've never met. In this case, knowing each other = crushing on each other. That right there was already weird. Throw in the fact that they sounded exactly the same in their chapters that it was hard to tell them apart from each other...yeah no.

The family itself could have been a great story. A multiracial family with children trying to find their identity and struggling with hidden truths. Instead, this book was riddled with body shaming, insensitive portrayal of multiracial characters, undertones of racism (the mom literally marries the dad to piss of her parents because he's 'dark'). It just became too much. Add in the fact that the way the parents treated each other, and in front of their children no less, was so disgusting, it's amazing anyone can can be happy. Grow up and stop shaming each other. You're freaking adults who have both moved on, act like it.

The ending could have been impactful except that the characters were so one-dimensional that in the end I felt sad but not heartbroken. It didn't help that Sasha and Ray were more concerned with seeing each other and how they looked then with the devastating event taking place. There was just so much disconnect. Had Brashares taken the time to really nurture her characters and allow them to live instead of just throwing drama after drama after drama at them, I may have rated this higher.

A breakdown of this story in two seconds: A large, modern family of half siblings and stepsiblings share a house and their divorced, bitter parents - awkwardness and worse ensues. Told over the course of a pivotal summer for the youngest nonrelated kids Ray and Sasha, The Whole Thing Together is the convoluted story of how of the Stone-Thomases and the Riggs-Thomas family relate and recognize one another. Despite plenty of fodder for emotion and pathos there was more drama than substance to this novel. There was very little memorable about it -- except for the sadly notable fact that this modern family is interracially mixed.

Brashares has written several novels before, and before her style was brisk, engaging, fresh and occasionally bittersweet. With her newest effort, little remains the same; the emotions and characters are clumsily-drawn. Despite a strong first two opening chapters, the momentum and interest stall early on. The Whole Thing Together clocks in at supposedly 304 pages. I say "supposedly" because the very many characters in this contemporary novel had a way of making those three hundred pages feel rather more like five hundred. Tiresome characters are paired with pedestrian plotlines that eventually intersect with a cheap plot points; for the last 2/3 of the novel it's a struggle to stay involved or care about the revolving cast of narrators.

Also Ray's weird fantasies and thoughts about Sasha, and vice versa, though his are far more squicky ("She was the kind of pretty only someone as deep as him understood. [...] He continued to think it anyway, as though her loveliness was something he'd invented.")* , are not cool and totally ruin any family-feels the book tries to create between camps. I get they are not biologically related to one other, but they share siblings. It's weird... and also disappointing. Which is basically how I would sum up The Whole Thing Together anyway.

Quick review for a somewhat quick read for me, though it felt like I had to push myself through this novel several times. "The Whole Thing Together" has many issues, but I would echo concerns that much of this novel suffers from rampant cliches, insensitive references in the measure of racial attribution (considering it uses a racial slur casually and struggles constantly to accurately and sensitively portray the multiracial character who struggles with her identity) and sexism (slut shaming and odd fixations on physical details of the characters). In addition to those issues, I think the biggest downfall of this novel really came in that I just couldn't find a space to connect with the characters. Not as much as I wanted to, because there were parts of the narrative that had the potential to go interesting places, but never quite reached that point and abruptly halted in places where the development could've provided more intimacy than the narration allowed.

At its heart, "The Whole Thing Together" is a family drama, showcasing teens as well as young adults in a separate sections of the same family struggling through multiple phases and revelations in their lives. Think "Parenthood" or "Brothers and Sisters" in terms of TV dramas, only I think the characters in this novel were far less fleshed out. As ambitious as this narrative sought to be, it tried to take on far too much in a narrow scope, to the point where nothing really worked well. The narrative voices blended far too much for me to truly connect to them (I don't mind third-person omniscient POV, I read it quite often in many genres). I would hesitate to call this YA, it feels more like it straddles the line between YA and New Adult (at least if you think about certain themes tackled in this book).

The surprise revelation towards the ending was emotional, but I honestly think that it could've had more impact if the character constructions were stronger. In the end, it's a narrative with strong intentions, but the execution leaves an unmemorable and sometimes offputting portrayal that doesn't showcase the best of what Brashares can do, and as someone who liked the Sisterhood series, this left me greatly disappointed.

Overall score: 1.5/5 stars.

Note: I received this as an ARC from NetGalley, from the publisher.

After the sisterhood of the travelling pants I was excited to read this book, but I was let down. I found the jumping between characters to be confusing, the drama was predictable, the generic teen girl drama that seems to be in every other book these days.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Though they share a bedroom on opposite weeks at their families' beach house on Long Island, Ray and Sasha have never met. Family is a complicated term for these two teens who share three older half sisters (Ray with his mom and Sasha with her dad). From mutual childhood toys to books with notes written in the margins, Ray and Sasha's lives are more intertwined than one would expect, considering they've never met. They're like siblings, and something about sharing a space has become almost intimate. Not everything is sunshine and summery as one may expect of a book set at the beach. The carefully constructed modern day blended family dynamics show just how complex relationships can be. Told through multiple points of view, Brashares's The Whole Thing Together will charm readers with it's idealistic setting and family drama.

Thoughts: Having never read the iconic Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, I was looking forward of getting a taste of Brashares's writing. For me The Whole Thing Together didn't disappoint. I loved reading about dysfunctional family dynamics and a summer of change as described by multiple narrators and set at the beach.

This title wasn't for me - thank you for the chance to read it early.

THE WHOLE THING TOGETHER by Ann Brashares, best-selling author of Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, occurs during a modern day summer when siblings and half siblings reside at a beach house on Long Island. Sasha's dad was once married to Ray's Mom and together they had three daughters, Emma, Mattie, and Quinn. This story of family dysfunction and secrets received starred reviews from the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books and Publishers Weekly.

Like Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants there are several plot lines and multiple vignettes. However, I found the number of characters added confusion and I had trouble differentiating one from another (especially when many names seem to be purposefully unisex) and recalling all of their connections. In my opinion, Kirkus summarizes THE WHOLE THING TOGETHER very well: "The large cast of angst-y characters with their equally daunting number of angst-y issues impedes deep exploration of any particular character or idea."

A typical Brashares book, this time focusing on the complicatedness of family--but hits most of the same notes, including the death of the too perfect to live character. It has a lot of heart but ultimately feels like it's missing just a little more, with character development and with story.

Thanks to NetGalley and to Delacorte Press for the preview copy of this book.

I have to agree with some of the other reviewers- this is not what I consider a YA book. Aside from the main characters, Sasha and Ray and their young love story, the story of this dysfunctional family would be classified as general fiction. The basic premise of the crazy family who is finally united at the end- although not through joy but through tragedy, is a good one. However, aside from the 2 teens, the other characters are not well developed and seem more like stereotypes than people. I still don't really know who was related to whom and how- way too many relationships to keep track of.

A quick read, but not one I can highly recommend.

I didn't like this one nearly as much as I wanted to. I have a few fundamental complaints. While I liked the general premise, the plot seemed entirely too reliant on happenstance. I can handle a few coincidences, random events, but not a whole book of them Its also entirely expected. I liekdth3e notion of these young people first needing to define themselves and then redefine themselves as circumstances changed, as well as the ideas of what makes a family. Its not a comfortable read. Sadie and Ray are an unnatural couple, a fact that Brashares seems to realize as she continually reminds us that they are not, inf fact, related. Simply by the fact of their shared siblings, though there's this pseudo incestuous cast to their romance that can make you feel a bit ... icky.

Unfortunately this wasn't good at all.It reminds me another book and I couldn't connect at all with the characters

I read the publisher's summary for The Whole Thing Together several months ago and instantly knew I wanted to read this book. I don't do this too often, but I went into the book hoping for a certain type of thing in terms of both story and style. My very particular expectations could have led to a complete disaster, but, for the most part, this book was just what I wanted it to be.

The Whole Thing Together is about a complicated family. Sasha and Ray's parents used to be married. They had three daughters before a very messy divorce divided the family. Their parents remarried and Sasha and Ray were born. Although they've never met, Sasha and Ray have shared the same bedroom for all of their lives. It's a bedroom in the Long Island beach house that both Sasha's dad and Ray's mom refuse to give up. And so, despite all the bitter feelings and completely avoiding each other, the families have been sharing the beach house for all these years alternating weeks so that the parents never have to see other. The three older sisters, Emma, Quinn, and Mattie are the bridge in all this mess, navigating between the two sides of their complicated family.

I really enjoyed the complicated family dynamics in this book. I liked reading about a big family--one with a lot of kids and a lot of sisters. And I appreciated the sibling interaction.

I also loved the ensemble cast. No one character is really the star in this book. It's about the whole family, and the story floats from sibling to sibling. Also, this style of story telling is episodic in its nature, and I enjoyed seeing how the various elements came together. Also, be aware that this book is definitely on the upper-end of the YA spectrum.

I think what I liked most about this book is the quiet atmosphere. It's a type of writing style that I really enjoy. It reminded me a bit of The Bone Gap or We Were Liars, and I know this style isn't to everyone's taste, but it just really works for me. I love a fast-paced story as much as anyone, but I really love to slow it down every once in awhile too.