The Admissions - Book Review

The Hawthorne family is living an idyllic though hectic life in an affluent subdivision near San Francisco. Their oldest daughter Angela is in her senior year of high school and focused on her early application to Harvard. She's always been focused on attending her father's alma mater. Though she's maintained the position of Valedictorian, her sometime friend Henrietta is nipping at her heels. Between school and her extra curricular activities, Angela's plate is full. Her parents are feeling just as harried. Her mom, Nora, is juggling her career in real estate with raising her three daughters and chauffeuring them to their activities. Gabe is always busy at work and there is a new intern that seems to have her sights on him. If they can just get Angela accepted to Harvard, then and only then, they might be able to take a break and breathe.

The Admissions by Meg Mitchell Moore was a She Read Book Club pick for fall. It wasn't necessarily a book I would choose but I usually like the She Read choices so I was willing to give it a shot. As a mom with teenagers worrying about college admissions, I initially found The Admissions to be a stressful read. I could relate to so much of the pressure and stress that the Hawthorne family was feeling. However, as the story began to unfold and the family members started making their sometimes unwise decisions, I became immersed in their story and could disengage my own emotions from the turmoil of their lives (thank goodness).

I ended up loving The Admissions. It might even make my top favorites list for the year. The characters were engaging and real and normal enough that you don't usually find them in literature. They regularly made unfortunately choices but I loved how Moore showed their justifications. It didn't make their choices any more wrong but it did make the novel so much more human. They weren't bad people. They just did dumb things and eventually there were consequences to their actions.

The Admissions by Meg Mitchell Moore is a perfect contemporary piece of literature that lays bare how many families in middle class America feel about raising children and getting them into the best colleges so that they are more likely to have that golden life with the best opportunities. With a snarky wit and a keen eye for observing human nature, Moore delivers a powerful, though entertaining, novel on family life and the drive for success.

The Admissions by Meg Mitchell Moore is published by Doubleday in August 2015.

**I received a complimentary copy of The Admissions. All opinions are my own. No other compensation was received. **