Book #8 |
Book: The Celebrants | Author: Steven Rowley | |
| Source: Library loan Format: Large print |
Pages: 320 | Duration: 01/27/26 – 01/29/26 (3 days) | |
| Rating: ★★★☆☆ | Genres: fiction, LGBT, queer, friendship, chosen family | ||
| 📕10-word summary: Non-binary version of The Big Chill augmented by pre-deceased funerals. 🖌6-word review: An interesting, unique concept goes awry. |
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| 💭A memorable quote: “We weren’t meant to see everything, we weren’t built to do everything, we aren’t capable of knowing everything. At a certain point, peace has to be found with the choices we’ve made.” | |||
| 🎓Some new-to-me words: Malinois, paean, trine, planchette, huipil | |||
| Description:* A Big Chill for our times, celebrating decades-long friendships and promises — especially to ourselves — by the bestselling and beloved author of The Guncle. It’s been a minute — or five years — since Jordan Vargas last saw his college friends, and 28 years since their graduation when their adult lives officially began. Now Jordan, Jordy, Naomi, Craig, and Marielle find themselves at the brink of a new decade, with all the responsibilities of adulthood, yet no closer to having their lives figured out. Though not for a lack of trying. Over the years they’ve reunited in Big Sur to honor a decades-old pact to throw each other living “funerals,” celebrations to remind themselves that life is worth living — that their lives mean something, to one another if not to themselves. But this reunion is different. They’re not gathered as they were to bolster Marielle as her marriage crumbled, to lift Naomi after her parents died, or to intervene when Craig pleaded guilty to art fraud. This time, Jordan is sitting on a secret that will upend their pact.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: I wanted to like this book more. I really did. But I didn’t. This is my third Steven Rowley book, and I probably won’t read any more by him. I also wanted to love The Guncle more than I did, but I absolutely loved The Editor. (Full disclosure: Having been an editor for a living and loving Jackie Kennedy Onassis may have influenced that.) I guess we can call it progress that there was a time when I thought anything by a gay author or about gay people was fantastic but am now more discerning. There were 2 “scenes” in this book that really didn’t work for me, and they were long scenes — one about a skydiving outing the 5-person group did together, and the other was near the end that went on and on about kittens. Blech. | |||
See the rest of the books I’ve read in 2026 and previous years: 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019.
