If I’m being honest, If We’re Being Honest wasn’t really my cup of tea. Or coffee. Or wine. This falls much in the vein of the currently lauded Sally Rooney style, where multiple characters give you a disaffected look into their lives while they try and figure out the world around them. In this story it is the Williams family, who already having had their lives disrupted by the fact the family patriarch Gerry is dead, is thrown into even more upheaval when Gerry’s best friend Fred drunkenly informs them all during his eulogy speech that the pair were in love with each other. And they’re all stuck together for a whole week in which the story is told as they wait around for family friend Rebecca to get married. The story is seen through the eyes of Ellen, Gerry’s wife; Wilma, Gerry’s daughter; JJ, Gerry’s son; Jennifer, Gerry’s daughter-in-law; Alice and Delia, Wilma’s daughters and Grant and Red, JJ and Jennifer’s sons. Remembering all of the characters telling the story isn’t easy; constantly switching between them all is exhausting, made even more so by the personal conflicts in many of their lives. There are characters that drove me crazy, Gerry’s other daughter Carol Anne at the top of the list. Carol Anne is self-absorbed and narcissistic, and everyone kind of just shrugs their shoulders and goes, eh, it’s Carol Anne. Her significant other Robert explains why he stays with her, and I know people that need that kind of drama in their lives, but clearly the rest of her family does not. JJ is oblivious and Jennifer is in a constant rage at the world. And Grant is the prototypical dude that coasts through life, shallow and uninvested in anything. Thankfully Shook does provide closure for many of these characters that makes the reader feel like it was at least somewhat worthwhile to invest their time in all of these people. The scene at the end with Ellen and her grandchildren is definitely a redeeming part of the book and finally invests the subtle emotion and depth that is deliberately lacking in the rest of the story. A complimentary copy of this book was provided by the publisher. All thoughts and opinions are my own.