Looking for a book that hits on every hyper-zennial political and culture topic there is without actually giving any substance to any of it?
Man, I hate writing negative reviews, but this one was just.not.it.
I will give the two major trigger warnings for the book here so you don’t have to read through the rest: miscarriage & extra-marital affairs.
The premise of When We Grow Up is a group of friends from childhood go on a vacation together just before turning thirty.
I was expecting it to be an exploration of deep humanity and how we grow and change and how things in our lives that seemed so foundational just don’t make sense anymore. Instead we have a whiny narrator, Clare, who has major self-esteem issues and a group of friends who don’t even like each other all that much (past or present).
Clare is floundering. She doesn’t seem confident in any of the choices she’s made in her life. She also doesn’t seem close to any of these friends. It’s a paradox that they know one another more deeply than anyone because of how much shame and humiliation they witnessed in each other growing up (inevitable in middle school), but they also know hardly anything about each other as an adult. They claim they’re so close, but they almost never talk about anything personal. Everything is so damn surface level. Then when they finally do, it’s like they could be talking about literally anyone.
I only know Clare by the choices she makes in the novel, and how self-critical she is. I don’t really know a damn thing about her character. That’s a problem.
I didn’t like Jessie, the only other girl in the group (why are there so many girls on the cover?), and the boys didn’t have enough personality to even tell who is who until far too late in the novel. There was a black one and a gay one, and I thought they were the same person for most of the book. We knew who Liam was because Clare is having an affair with him, which also irks me because she didn’t seem to even know why, beginning, middle, or end. (I’m not even counting this as a spoiler since it is alluded to in the blurb).
The biggest problem was I didn’t care. There was nothing interesting about the book except the first chapter. Their vacation in Hawai’i happens to coincide with the false missile alert that went out to everyone on-island in 2018. That happens on page one, and kind of explains the whole book. The characters are completely apathetic, even when they’re warned they’re about to die. This absolutely should have been a short story. It actually would have been an excellent short story.
I wanted to like a book like this. As I read I was hoping that things would shift and the insights would start bringing everything together in some profound way. Nope. Never happened. The only insight here is that Clare is unhappy and kind of judgy. In some ways it kind of felt disparaging toward the whole generation, which, for context, I am the same age as these characters. In 2018 I was turning 30.
(spoiler)
Near the end, Jessie kind of confronts Clare by telling her being a boy’s girl is essentially a fucked-up thing to be.
Ahem.
Like I said, this book was not for me.
Note:: I received an early copy of this book from the publisher through netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
Details
Title:: When We Grow Up
Author:: Angelica Baker
Genre:: Contemporary Fiction
Publisher:: Flatiron Books
Length:: 288 pages
Audio Length:: 9h 53m
Audiobook Narrator:: Imani Jade Powers
Audiobook Publisher:: Macmillan Audio
Published:: February 25th, 2025
The Litertarian Rating:: 2-Stars
If you liked this book, check out…
The Most Fun We Ever Had | Claire Lombardo
It’s All Relative | Rachel Magee
The Summer Pact | Emily Giffin
