Start Without Me
By Joshua Max Feldman
William Morrow & Company, 9780062668721, October 2017, 288pp.

The Short of It:

What happens when a recovering alcoholic returns home for Thanksgiving, only to abandon his family because he just can’t imagine being with them?

The Rest of It:

Adam is home for Thanksgiving and overwhelmed by his family. He’s a recovering alcoholic and being home is just too much for him to deal with.

Marissa is a flight attendant and pregnant with another man’s baby. Her husband, who senses that their relationship is strained, has no idea what he’s in for when she shows up for the Thanksgiving meal.

Marissa and Adam are strangers but when they meet at a restaurant, they lean on one another for support as they figure out this next step in their lives.

I love stories centered around the Thanksgiving meal. There is always so much tension to these gatherings, relatives you haven’t seen in forever, cousins that drive you absolutely mad, mothers who over-fuss about everything. DRAMA. Start Without Me is full of drama but not really AT the dinner table. It takes place all over as Adam abandons his family to take a breather from reality.

It took some time for me to get into this story but by the final pages, I was pretty into it and wanted to see how things would turn out for Marissa and Adam. The cover sort of makes it  look like it could be a funny story but it’s not really funny. It’s not depressing but definitely not funny so I just wanted to put that out there.

Have you read this author before?

Source: Review copy provided by the publisher.
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