Collect Families And Other Nonreturnable Gifts Penned By Claire LaZebnik Volume

hadn't read a book in almost a month and i'm pretty sure it was because i was waiting for this one to come out.
even though somehow i didn't even know it was coming out, maybe i was too excited by epic fail, or maybe my head was in the clouds, either way, i'm so happy right now, i might even shed a tear or two of joy, maybe.

oh and the book is fantastic,.I really liked the touches of detail, You can really understand the main character's frustration with life, While you might not agree with her actions always, you still hope she will find a way to be happy and comfortable, this wasnt an on the edge of your seat, dramatic book, however, it was funny, a little sad, and relatable, i enjoyed it. it was a great, get your mind of things, easy read, Keats Sedlak is living a content, comfortable life, She is living in an apartment with her boyfriend of ten years and has a not so challenging job as an office manager.
However, she is the oddball in her family, the normal one to say the least, Her brother, Milton, hasn't left their mother's house for two years, Her sister, Hopkins, is a genius, and she is currently saving lives as a neurologist, Her father, also a genius, is a published author and a professor at Harvard, Lastly, her mother drives her insane for many reasons, one of those is for always implying that Keats's boyfriend, Tom, isn't good enough or smart enough for her.
In fact, her whole family seems to think that about Tom, They also don't like her job none of them understand why she is working there and not getting a higher education,

While her family definitely drives her nuts, she is there for them when she is needed, like for going through items in the house she grew up in because her mother wants to sell it.
In spending more time with her family, she is also spending more time with her dad's personal assistant, Jacob, Keats starts to question certain aspects in her life and witnesses all the changes taking place around her, She starts to see that change isn't always a bad thing,

My thoughts:
This was a very good read, but it made me a little depressed at the same time, Let me try to explain why without giving too much away, Keatss parents, who have been separated for years, are finally going through a divorce, a family member suffers a medical emergency, and I think the fact that Keats has to constantly defend her boyfriend and her happiness made it a little sad for me.


Keats is a great protagonist though, Although her family is constantly on her case and questioning her happiness, Keats stands up against it and defends herself, She also clearly loves them and lends them a hand, or even a stubborn threat, to help them out, I definitely felt for Keats when she was dealing with her family, but it wasnt always depressing, When she did interact with them there was usually some humor to be found in the struggle too, Here is Keats describing time with her dad:

“When he finally moves on from the topic of Keatss Wasted Life, its to give me a lecture about the heart, both as muscle and as a literary trope.
Its clearly something hes put a

lot of thought into, but none of his observations seem all that original to me, and after a while, I cant restrain a yawn, which sends him into a long rant about the deterioration of the American attention spanwhich makes me so bored I could scream, which I guess proves his point.
” p.

While I wouldnt say that this is the best book Ive ever read, it was an enjoyable read with a melancholy sort of feel.

This was an unexpected pleasure, I picked it up in the library looking for some fluff, and though it was lighthearted, it was more than that, In lots of ways it reminded me of one of my favourite authors, Ann Tyler, Not quite so wellwritten but then hardly anyone writes prose like Tyler does and not quite so subtle, but it had that same gentle observation, that insightful look into family dynamics that typifies Tyler and which I absolutely love.


From the blurb on this book, I took it to be a story about a woman growing out of love wiht her longterm childhood sweetheart and finding someone else.
It was about that kind of, but it was much more about her finding her place in her family, and about how shining a clearer light on the past can totally change what you think of the present and what you want from the future.
This was done in a light, fun and entertainting way though, no navelstaring or angsting, as I said just gentle observation, painting of pictures and then stepping back allowing the reader to draw her own conclusion.
This is one of the things I liked best about it no beating about the head with lessons, no big earthshattering philosophy, but you were in no doubt about what it was that the main character was seeing, learning, concluding.


I'm worried I'm making it sound dry, when it wasn't I read it all in two sittings, The family Sedlaks are one of those intellectual slightly mad families that could have been cliched but weren't, The main character, Keats her brother is Milton, her sister Hopkins, very Tyleresque pun there by the parents is the odd one out in that she thinks she's not clever, she's 'normal', she's the clearerupper and the mouse that everyone forgets about.
That's what I mean, when I say it could be cliched, but it wasn't, You really got inside Keats' head, you really empathised with her, and luckily LaZebnik is far too good a writer to make everything black and white.
There were plenty of shades of grey, and enough of an unravelling at the end to give you hope but not to tie all the loose ends up too neatly.


I do love dysfunctional family stories, and this was was really good, a thoroughly enjoyable read, I'll defintiely be looking for more of this author's books,

What a neat little book,
A quick read, a funny book, and more than anything you give a crap about these characters, Not only did I identify with the characters, but I'm convinced someone stepped into my life and somehow thought up Keats, the lead character in the book.

I haven't read many books lately where I give a crap about the characters,
Keats is the underachiever of the family, She's the daughter who just graduated with normal grades, she has a normal job, she has a stableieboring as hell relationship ofyears, and she's content to not rock the boat.
She's living in the shadow of her overachiever dynamo big sister Hopkins, Her younger brother Milton is antisocial and doesn't leave his room or his computerever, Their mother is divorcing their father, and is out dating all over the place, Their father isn't in the best of health, isn't taking well to the divorce or his soontobeexwife selling the house, and suffers a heart attack, bringing things to a head.

Keats is having a hell of a time, She's just hit theyear anniversary mark with her boyfriend Tom, She's expecting a ring for her birthday, instead he's gotten her name tattooed on him, This makes Keats realize things just aren't what she's imagined them to be, Namely, she's not that happy with Tom, This realization, of course, is accompanied by a regrettable action that ultimately leads to her ending her relationship with Tom, Her oddball family who never really warmed to him anyway encourages her to get out and start dating again, but Keats is torn by feelings of shame for hurting her now ex and her burgeoning feelings for Jacob, who's basically a member of the family without the bloodline attached.
She's also torn by feelings of wanting to beat the crap out of her annoying sister, who can't squeeze time to come see her ailing father into her super busy schedule.
Keats finally snaps and tells her sister like it is, She also begins to realize that to be happy, she needs to shake things up and go for the brass ring,
Overall, I have to say, just a great book to read, You can't put it down, because you want to see things work out for Keats and her oddball family, A good book to read if you need to take your mind off of things, I was surprised to see the Reading Group Guide at the end of the book, Wasn't impressed with this book, The characters weren't interesting I feel like the author wants you to dislike them, By the time I was halfway through, I didn't care what happened to the characters, . . I just wanted to hurry up and finish the book, Having only read Epic Fail before, I kind of assumed that all of Claire's books were YA, so it was a pleasant surprise to find that this protagonist was in her twenties and that the themes were a lot more mature.
I'm seeing some recurring patterns here unconventional/academic families, coming of age moments and romantic dilemmas, but they're well told and satisfyingly crafted.
Great characters and believable situations, I enjoyed how thest person perspective created dramatic irony, As the book went on, we become more and more aware that Keats's opinion wasn't exactly objective and the arguments she kept repeating became more and more hollow.
I loved seeing her get herself out of the hole and into a new life, dragging her whole family back together with her momentum.
The end revelation about Hopkins seemed slightly overdone and a tiny bit disappointing, but otherwise a nice story and looking forward to reading more by this author.
Keats Sedlak has always felt inferior amid her brilliant family, and the only sane member, With a steady boyfriend and job, she's constantly being called back home to help the family, Now, her mother is filing for divorce and putting the house up for sale, her brother won't leave his bedroom, her genius sister refuses to come home and help, her father's health is slipping, and.
. . she's starting to question her own life choices throughout it all,

In one night, I read this start to finish, I was that engrossed. More a women's fiction with romantic elements, this books delves into the family dynamic, our innermost fears of mediocrity, and dares us to question what we truly want.
With realistic and flawed characters, hilarious secondary characters and scenarios, this is not to be missed,
Reminder that change is good This was the first book I've ever read by Claire LaZebnik and I really enjoyed it! Keats was a really likable person and you really felt for her when she had to deal with her crazy, dysfunctional family.
When I first realized that Tom and Keats had a huge age difference and they had started dating when she was, I was a little creeped out, but it really worked with the story.
I really hated Hopkins but I loved Milton, so LaZebnik did a great job developing her characters and defining who they are, I enjoyed following Keats and watching her discover how she really wants to live her life, Her family sounds so crazy that I understood completely how Keats felt towards them, Keats really learns to understand the value of family and how you're stuck with what you have, so you should make the most of it.
There were some slow parts to the book, but in the end it was a nice story, In a way I loved this book, well written, displaying some very credible characters, showing how people with high intellectual capacities, geniuses even, often suffer, have social difficulties, and that being very intelligent doesn't mean being very happy or wealthy.

The family story is really good too, explaining how comparisons and early false convictions can obscure ones jugement and gives way to severe selfdeprecation.

What I didn't like, at all, was the final moral,
As my review is hidden I'll be explicite,
At some point Jason who seems to be a nice person but who's jealous says that Tom doesn't deserve Keats, being so much less intelligent, funny, and charming than she is.

And it's quite the point of the story in fact : Keats is very clever but no genius, contrarily to her siblings and father, and so have gave up all pretensions to achieve anything at all, and have chosen a confortable live, in which she just survives, without using her brain, in a job in which she's head over heels over skilled and living with a nice man who doesn't have much conversation and offers her no challenge.

In a way she's shunning the world as much as her brilliant young brother who, at twenty, haven't been out of the house for two years, geeking all day in front of his computer.

And I agree with this conviction: I believe that it can't be sane and confortable to spent ones live with someone who's some much more, or less, clever than we are.
Charlotte couldn't catch any better husband then Mr Collins, but nowadays, a woman or a man can choose, and should find someone feeling and living live the same way they do.

In this book, Keats, twentyfive, discovers that she's not happy with Tom, just not unhappy, and very bored, having buried her brain under trivialities, and running away from her clever and unorthodox family, considering that they are noxious for her and that Tom is her shelter.

In the end of the book she leaves Tom, who's being her boyfriend for ten years, sad to give pain, but resolved to take back her life and be proactive about it.

All that is quite fine for me,
But what disturbed me was that I was left with the idea that Tom had have too high expectations, wanted to keep for himself Keats, and is rightly punished to have dared to pretend keeping captive even loving and cherishing a higher intellect.
And he's discarded, left devastated, crushed, castigated, . .
During the book Tom is exposed as a rather silly, clumsy, clueless young man, who doesn't understand jokes, blunders and is only interested by drinking beers and viewing sports.
An annoying character, who dares loving Keats with all his heart, impudent as he is!
The author could should have demonstrate that he wasn't so happy in fact with a girl much more brilliant than he were, that he felt inferior and not really appreciated, and ready to be eased, liberated, after the first shock of the rupture.

But no. The reader closes the book with the idea that any nice handsome average intelligent man is dying to have the chance to keep at his side, even to her disfavour, a cleverer woman, as if it was the one and only consecration, the ultime honour.
As if gifted persons were another species, superior ones elves maybe and a catch for any normal person,
I resented this snobbery,
Tom deserved his happy ending, not to be tossed away as an ugly undersized sock!,