BookBrowse Reviews Returns and Exchanges by Kayla Rae Whitaker

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A hardworking couple becomes wealthy when their family business expands…but success isn't all it's cracked up to be.

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Married couple Fred and Fran Taylor have poured their lives into building up their regional discount store chain, Baker-Taylor's, and they're finally starting to see success. The chance to acquire another chain seems like the perfect opportunity to firmly launch them into the realm of the wealthy. But success comes with its own complications. As the company becomes more prosperous, cracks begin to form in the couple's marriage—and their relationships with their four children.

Returns and Exchanges, Kayla Rae Whitaker's second novel, spans more than a decade, from 1979 to 1990, and is grouped into three sections. The first features chapters from the close-third-person perspectives of Fred and Fran, the second their two eldest children, and the third their two youngest. This is effective because we get to see each character's interior world, but never at the same time. After getting to know Fred and Fran early on, we, like their children, are left wondering what's going through their heads. And characters who are not well known at the beginning start to open up to readers, giving new context for earlier events. It feels like being a part of a large family, where you're closer to some members than others at different points in time.

Though they grow up in the same household, the two elder children, Josiah and Sam, have a very different upbringing than the younger, Benny and Birdie. The older two were already in their teens when the chain's expansion happened, and they experienced a middle-class childhood, living in an old farmhouse with parents who often did frontline retail work. Their younger siblings spent their teen years as "rich kids" with the latest sneakers and Walkmans, calling a new-build mansion home. By all appearances, Benny and Birdie are the privileged ones, but they also experience stressors that their older brothers did not.

A point of tension in Whitaker's novel is the "new money" nature of Fran and Fred's wealth. In many ways, they are welcomed into Louisville society, gaining access to the right clubs and rubbing elbows with prominent businesspeople and politicians. But privately, their old-money neighbors look down on them. Josiah reflects at one point that as a Vanderbilt-educated man with second-generation wealth, he can blend in in a way his parents, with their working-class roots and mannerisms, cannot. And Fred, more than any other family member, longs to join the elite.

Fred is perhaps the most frustrating character in the book. While he takes pride in being the CEO of a successful chain and enjoys the acclaim that comes with it, he plays much less of a role in the day-to-day operations than Fran does. She's the one with real business sense, the person who handles all "the books." While Fred tries to put himself in the role of the patriarch who calls the shots, it's an uneasy fit. He's a passive person who's happy to let others take on more than their fair share of the work. One character says of Fred: "His inaction is purposeful, designed to shield himself from the hardship of responsibility and pain. And it has hurt those around him." Yet Fred is too pitiable to be a villain. Crippled by panic attacks and trauma from a tragedy earlier in life, he seeks stability in the only way he knows how—by pursuing wealth and trying to fit the mold 20th-century society has built for him.

Fran is, in many ways, the hero of the story. She is the driving force of the business, and over the course of the book, she begins to step out from behind Fred's shadow. She also begins to experience romantic feelings for another woman—taboo in the 1970s. We follow her through the decades as she rebels against her prescribed role and becomes a force to be reckoned with.

This expansive novel is about a family undergoing constant change: rising and falling wealth, mental health crises, and marital tensions. Though they are, at times, cruel to one another, the Taylors remain connected. The complexity of the relationships feels realistic. Readers will enjoy following the deeply imperfect Taylor clan through all the messiness of life.

This review first ran in the May 20, 2026 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.