The Most Fun We Ever Had

DEBUT Lombardo’s first novel focuses on three generations of the Sorenson family, whose lives are upended by the arrival of Jonah. Jonah’s birth and adoption were a family secret known only by Violet, his birth mother, and her older sister, Wendy. Before Jonah is plucked out of foster care and dropped into the lives of the well-off Sorensons, we meet Marilyn Connolly and David Sorenson, who fall madly in love in the 1970s and raise four daughters over several tumultuous decades. Family members each star in their own episode, which makes the book read like television drama, but the pacing of visual storytelling is missing. The characters are recognizable types; we have the ex-anorexic, slutty sister with a drinking problem; the uptight perfectionist with a torrid secret; and an unmoored millennial living in a rooftop shed in Portland, OR. And don’t forget the middle sister: she’s reliable and self-contained—until she isn’t. The parents whose perfect marriage is not so perfect are the unifying element. Unfortunately, the author’s attempt to flesh out these tropes makes the story bloated and overstuffed.