"The Admissions"

Was not my favorite Meg Mitchell Moore book.

As many of you know I love Meg Mitchell Moore's books and am always excited to start a new one, so when I started listening to The Admissions I was ready for another great book I wouldn't be able to put down by Moore.

Early in the book I was disappointed and was hopeful it would turn around and I would be hooked but that never happened. While small glimmers of the book moved and changed, it never stuck.

The story was told from multiple perspectives overlapping like other books by the author it did not deliver the same way. It was also the first book by Moore I had read that was not a beach read.

The Hawthorne family lives in the Bay Area of California and the story is told from each family member's perspective.

Nora ( the mother) has a successful real estate career and is a busy mother of three carrying the stress of the family. She was my least favorite character and spent more time writing her sister emails venting about how busy their family was and how stressful it was than doing anything to resolve some of their issues.

Gabe, Nora's husband and father of their three children is a hard worker who prides himself on the degree he earned from Harvard University and has pushed his daughter Angela to follow in his footsteps. Gabe is hiding a big secret that has him full of pressure and stress.

Angela is the oldest daughter of Nora and Gabe is in her senior year of high school and is applying to Harvard. She is an overachiever in all AP classes and on the cross country team while volunteering and involved in clubs and other activities. Angela is under a lot of pressure and is starting to make poor choices. As a character, she is such an overachiever that it is hard to relate to her and you want to yell at her to slow down.

Cecily is in the fourth grade and has one best friend Pinky and is a talented Irish step dancer who spends all her time practicing. She will learn what it's like to make mistakes and wrong decisions. Cecily feels lost in the shuffle of her family's busy life.

The reader does not get Maya the youngest Hawthorne daughter perspective however she does play a big role in the story.

A lot of the book is just a laundry list of everything the characters need to do all the time. I got stressed listening to all of it. Each character is so wrapped up in what they are doing they don't take the time to check in on the other family members. The book is themed around the amount of stress the modern family is under today which the novel does but could have been executed differently and better. The story of the Hawthorne family is based around secrets, mistakes, truths, and consequences.

The Admissions by Meg Mitchell Moore is a book you can pass on as it falls short in several areas.