(Audible version) this story hit on just about every aspect of real life drama that could possibly happen in a lifetime. I really enjoyed the characters and would recommend this book. ( )

This book reminds me of movies like Crazy, Stupid Love, and Adventureland. Not so much the story, but how it’s written.

I loved seeing Sam, Bella, and Suzie grow up. They are all intertwined since they lived in the same neighborhood and have been friends forever. Each character had their own flaws and circumstances that caused them to make the decisions they did. All three of them make some questionable choices, and try to figure out how they will live them. Bella was probably my favorite character. She seems to get the crap end of the deal no matter what she does.

This book will take you on an emotional ride. There are moments where you want to shake the characters, and others where you want to weep right along with them. There are also touch moments where you realize that friendship is so much more important than grudges, or heartache that happened in the past. This is a true coming of age story that will keep you reading. ( )

I received this book from the Early Reviewers program and read it last November. Unfortunately, my original review disappeared into the internet somewhere! I loved Robin Antalek's book, The Summer We Fell Apart and couldn't wait to read The Grown Ups. It did not disappoint. Just a wonderful book about growing up and trying to find happiness. This is a great coming of age story that gets it right. ( )

The cover of Robin Antalek's The Grown Ups is a photo of what looks like an abandoned picnic table. It drew me in right away, wondering what happened at that table. Did the people who ate there enjoy themselves or was there an argument and is that why no one is sitting there?

The Grown Ups open in 1997 at Suzie Epstein's 15th birthday party. Suzie brings her neighbor Sam into her basement and shows him photos of neighborhood women that her father, who just moved out out, had hidden. Sam just wanted to kiss Suzie, but Suzie wanted Sam to know that his mother's photo was there, and that it implied that her father and his mother were sleeping together.

Soon after, Sam's mother left too, and that left Sam alone with his father and older brother Michael to fend for themselves. Suzie's mom falls into a funk and it is left to Suzie to run the household and care for her little brothers.

Suzie's mom moves the family away to reunite with her husband in Brookline, far away from Sam. Sam is distraught and he begins to date Bella, Suzie's best friend. Bella loves Sam, Sam pines for Suzie, and Suzie is determined to go to medical school. She will not let herself become totally dependent on a man like her mother.

Suzie meets someone and falls in love, and Bella and Sam date, though Sam can't really commit to Bella the way she deserves. He becomes distant and loses his way in life.

Until he finds that he has a talent for cooking. He works for a caterer in Manhattan where
"The prep kitchens were in a warehouse building near the West Side Highway, and the food was what you would expect at a wedding for a hundred or so of your not-so-close friends. There were always a multitude of chicken dishes on the menu, as well as salmon puffs and shrimp rolls, and roasted red potatoes. These dishes traveled well on the Long Island Expressway en route to their location."
I never would have imagined that the warehouses on the West Side Highway housed catering kitchens. I will think of that the next time I am at an event for hundreds of people.

I enjoyed the descriptions of Sam's food, like "the quinoa salad with roasted vegetables, black bean burgers on whole grain rolls, a green salad, and new potatoes with lemon laid out on the table in the backyard underneath the grape arbor."

Or this one: "For dinner Sam grilled the corn and steaks, pulverized the parsley, lemon, garlic and oil into a pesto he drizzled over thin slices of meat and roasted potato, and served everything on the deck."

The Grown Ups is a wonderful coming-of-age story, although the scenes set in 1997 seemed to me to contain details more in line with being a teenager in the 1970s, with all the moms smoking and milk delivered to homes and left in boxes on the porch.

Sam, Suzie and Bella each tell their story in alternating chapters, and they feel to me like people I would know from the neighborhood. They try to be good people, dealing with family problems, unrequited love, and all the scary things life can throw at you. Sam's dad Hunt in particular was a favorite of mine, supporting his kids and just being an all-round good guy.

Antalek writes a story filled with very detailed scenes that you can visualize in your mind. After reading The Grown Ups, I picked up Antalek's previous novel The Summer We Fell Apart because she tells a story with so much heart.

The Grown Ups reminded me of Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings, another story about a group of friends struggling with friendship, love and life. ( )

Suzie, Sam, and Bella are neighbors and friends when the novel opens up. As teens, they are vaguely aware of the secrets their parents are hiding from them, secrets that cause Suzie's family to move away and Sam's mother to divorce his father. This novel takes place over the course of ten years, with each chapter alternating between the the teens as they move off to college and become adults with their own lives and responsibilities. Although they all move away and grow up, family events (parent illnesses, deaths, etc.) eventually bring them all back together. Each young adult attempts to reconcile how the decisions they made as teens evolved to their adult relationships to one another.

I really enjoyed this story and I felt that each character was so fully described that they could be real people. This novel also uses rich sensory descriptions of time, place, and food to help the reader fully absorb themselves in the story. I particularly loved the way each character developed in depth and emotion as they learned from the past and tried to make changes in their lives. Although I had no knowledge of this book before I received it as a Summer Reading Challenge 2015 giveaway, I was very pleasantly surprised by what a well-written novel it was and I was sorry to see it come to an end. #SRC2015 ( )