Sunny Shelly’s Review: The Reunion, by Meghan Quinn

TO: Family and Friends

FROM: Cooper Chance

SUBJECT: 50th Wedding Anniversary

You’re invited to celebrate the 50th wedding Anniversary of Peggy and Martin.

· Food and drinks.

· Music.

· Fun.

Party is at the original Watchful Wanderers store.

Sunday, June 2nd.

RSVP to Cooper Chance—just reply to this email

No presents.

***

 

TO: Cooper Chance, Ford Chance

FROM: Palmer Chance

SUBJECT: Re: 50th Wedding Anniversary

Bro,

Please do not tell me you just sent a wedding anniversary invite through an email? Did that just happen?

Palmer—your not-so-happy sister

***

 

TO: Palmer Chance, Ford Chance

FROM: Cooper Chance

SUBJECT: I Did

***

 

TO: Cooper Chance, Ford Chance

FROM: Palmer Chance

SUBJECT: Re: I Did

You know I hate it when you respond in the subject line. It’s more work to delete the subject line and type in your response, than to just reply in the body of the email.

But ignoring that, what happened to the beautiful linen invites I picked out? You can’t just send an email for Mom and Dad’s 50th WEDDING ANNIVERSARY. We look so . . . uncultured.

***

 

TO: Palmer Chance, Ford Chance

FROM: Cooper Chance

SUBJECT: Re: I Did

The invites you wanted to purchase were going to be twelve dollars a pop. TWELVE dollars, Palmer. That’s a waste of money, a waste of resources, and just a useless way to kill more trees. Also, while you’re out galivanting around the world, who do you think was going to have to address all of those?

Me.

So, I did what was easiest. Sent an email. If you don’t like it, too bad.

***

 

TO: Cooper Chance, Ford Chance

FROM: Palmer Chance

SUBJECT: Re: I Did

You realize the family owns a multi-billion dollar, franchised, outdoors store, right? Twelve dollars an invite is a blip in the pool of gold Mom and Dad are sitting in. Now we look like cheap asses who send out a wedding anniversary invitation through email. You’re an editor, but you didn’t even beef up the text. You made bullet points.
Food.

Drinks.

Music.

Fun.

^^^ Yup, screams fun, Coop.

***

 

TO: Palmer Chance, Ford Chance

FROM: Cooper Chance

SUBJECT: Re: I Did

Once again, if you’re not here, you can’t have an opinion.

***

 

TO: Cooper Chance, Palmer Chance

FROM: Ford Chance

SUBJECT: Re: I did

Just catching up.

The invitation is less than ideal, especially for such a large and monumental event in our parents’ lives, parents who have given us every opportunity to succeed in life. I think we need to treat this anniversary with a little more appreciation and a little less complaining about the time and effort we have to put forth in order to make it happen.

I just spoke with Larkin and she is ordering the linen invites, having them shipped overnight, and we will have them sent out ASAP. We will treat the email as a funny save the date. I will reply all and tell everyone to expect a formal invitation in the mail.

Larkin and I will be flying out to Washington on Tuesday. We will be working up until the anniversary party on some very time-consuming tasks. Please be conscious of our time and energy.

I’ll be sure to have Larkin schedule in some meetings to go over all party arrangements as well as time with the family, but we won’t be staying with Mom and Dad. We booked two rooms at the Marina Island Bed and Breakfast, one being the attic suite so we can conduct business in private.

Please send your itineraries to Larkin and any requests so she can schedule them in.

Thank you.

Ford

 

 

Buckle up for The Reunion! Messy family drama, bickering siblings, three romances and a whole lot of big emotions are packed into 60 chapters of this wonderful story. I’m a member of Meghan Quinn’s review team, so I’ve known for a while that this girthy book was coming readers’ way. And it is epic!

The three Chance siblings, Cooper, Ford, and Palmer, used to be super close, but bad feelings and miscommunication has caused a rift between them. They try to put together an anniversary party for their parents and fail miserably as old hurts come to the surface and their fragile relationships become more strained. MQ beautifully wrote the POV from each sibling as well as their prospective partners: Nora, Larkin, and Beau.

What I found even more brilliant was the way she detailed how each sibling felt in relation to their position (or lack therefore) in the family business. Ford feels all the weight of the company on his shoulders as CEO, Palmer desperately wants to be involved but doesn’t think she deserves to be because of a secret she’s hiding from the past, and Cooper resents his siblings for being so far away, leaving him to care for their aging parents and can’t get Ford to take him seriously bc of decisions he’d made in the past. Decisions he made with his parents in mind.

I read The One Night, which is a prequel novella and sets up the one-night stand between Cooper and Nora, his ex-wife’s best friend. I was dying to see how these two were going to make it work, because Cooper is in such a bad place after his divorce. His life is a mess, he hates his job, he resents his siblings.

This book is so well done! Not just the individual romances, but the family drama as well. Great job, MQ!

I received an advanced copy and voluntarily left a review.