What readers think of All Adults Here, plus links to write your own review.

This is a book about family. And friends. And lovers. It's a book about the choices we make and the choices that are seemingly thrust upon us—for better or worse. It is a book about the human condition.

Written by Emma Straub, this is the story of the Strick family who live in the small, picturesque town of Clapham, New York. In the opening pages, the family matriarch, 68-year-old widow Astrid Strick, is an eyewitness to a horrific accident. She watches as someone she has known almost her entire life is mowed down by a speeding school bus. Tough-as-nails, strict, and unforgiving Astrid suddenly has a change of heart, not only worrying about all the mistakes she made as a mother, but also confessing a long-held secret to her astonished grown-up children. Life is changing fast. Astrid's granddaughter, 13-year-old Cecelia who lives in New York City with her parents, has come to live with her in Clapham after a mysterious incident (with very creepy undertones) at her NYC school has left her an outcast. Meanwhile, Astrid's three children all have issues of their own: Elliot, who appears successful on the outside, is supremely miserable; at 38, Porter is unmarried and pregnant (by choice); and Nicky, a former movie star and Cecelia's father, is more lost than most adolescents. Oh, and there is sex. A lot of sex and sexual confusion and sexual revelations and sexual angst.

A novel's form determines its function. This novel's form is ChickLit through and through, so it's almost all plot-driven, and at times eyerollingly so. Had the same storyline been written by a more literary author, the psychological issues and emotional breakthroughs of the characters would have resulted in a more structurally complex novel. But it's not that kind of story. It's a breezy, easy read that is not likely to result in readers having fervent, haunting thoughts long after the book ends. Reading this book is like eating cake for dinner. Fun and sweet, but ultimately not fulfilling.