The Jetsetters

Author: Amanda Eyre Ward
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group, 2021
Pages: 384
Rating: Highly Recommend

Synopsis: When seventy-year-old Charlotte Perkins submits a sexy essay to Become a Jetsetter contest, she dreams of reuniting her estranged children: Lee, an almost-famous actress; Cord, a handsome Manhattan venture capitalist who can't seem to find a partner; and Regan, a harried mother who took it all wrong when Charlotte bought her a Weight Watchers gift certificate for her birthday. Charlotte yearns for the yeas when her children were young, when she was a single mother who meant everything to them.

When she wins the contest, the family packs their luggage - both literal and figurative - and spends ten days traveling from sun-drenched Athens through glorious Rome to tapas-laden Barcelona on an over-the-top cruise ship, the Splendido Marveloso. As lovers new and old join the adventure, long-buried secrets are revealed and old wounds are reopened, forcing the Perkins family to confront the forces that drove them apart and the defining choices of their lives.

Review: This book is everything this genre should be.

I have a rule to not read books that have less than a 4 star rating on Goodreads. Well, as they say, rules are made to be broken. I saw this book on a library shelf and loved the title and the cover. I brought it home and started reading. I loved it. Then I looked at Goodreads - 3.10 stars. Whaaa?

Maybe it's the right book at the right time. Maybe it's the right book based on my own life experiences. It doesn't matter. I couldn't put this book down.

Interestingly, it gets compared to The Nest, which I didn't like at all and for which I could find no redeeming qualities.