Catherine Newman's "We All Want Impossible Things" was a lovely, warm and inviting book. I was so looking forward to Newman's new novel, "Sandwich." I so wanted to like Sandwich, but I felt that the characters were not all that developed and the humour was not just there. As always, Newman is an empathetic writer who gives her characters grace and consideration. As usual with Newman, it's about friendships, and how friends can be there for us during health, financial, or family concerns. While I did not enjoy this as much as I wanted to, Newman's writing does go a long way to making up for any concerns I may have with the novel.

IF someone has not read previous Newman's work, this would be a good place to start. However, I think I was spoiled by the wonderful "We All Want Impossible Things" and I wanted "Sandwich" to be as good.

I am sorry but I didn't enjoy this book. I did at the start but then found I really was not interested in the story of a menopausal woman who had some regrets.

I reviewed Sandwich by Catherine Newman for book recommendation and sales site LoveReading.co.uk

I have chosen Sandwich as a LoveReading Star Book and Liz Pick of the Month.

Please see the link for the full review..

A stunning piece of work. I loved the authors first book and this I think is possibly even better. She just writes middle aged women SO WELL. I loved it

After reading We All Want Impossible Things recently I had to jump straight into Sandwich as soon as possible. The way Catherine writes feels so raw and real and natural that you can’t help but be sucked into whatever is happening in the story. I absolutely loved the family unit and how the whole story was told over the course of just one week but you learnt so much and felt so much for the characters that by the end you felt that you were right there with them and proud of their developments and achievements. There were so many moments I was taken aback and I loved that Rocky didn’t shy away from being real about the changes her body and mind go through throughout the book. Just such a brilliant read and I’m so grateful to have been able to read an eARC thanks to Double Day Books and NetGalley 😭✨

Thank you NetGalley and the publishers for kindly sending me this ARC.

This book is gorgeous and so easy to binge and devour in one or two sittings. The writing flows so well and the pace is fast, with the story truly sweeping you up. I found it really compelling, raw, and honest, with touches of humour along the way. The characters are well developed for such a short novel!

Rocky (Rachel) and her husband Nick have been renting the same cottage, same one week at Cape Cod USA for twenty years.
They are joined by their adult children Jamie & Willa, and Jamie’s girlfriend Maya.
Rocky’s parents join them for their brief usual two day stay.
And not forgetting the family cat.

Set over their one week of the rental cottage, we experience the highs and lows of an every day family.
There are some funny laugh out loud moments betwixt some sad poignant remembrance moments.
The book moves through the storyline of present times and past memories. Coming to realise some facts cannot remain hidden.
Familial love, feelings and emotions good and bad. Down to earth, like being a fly on the wall to someone else’s life and vacation.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Publisher for an advanced e-book copy. Opinions about the book are entirely my own.

Gorgeous and painful and sad, Catherine Newman might actually be my new favourite author. There's plot that happens but it's mostly more about the vibes and the conversation and the relationships between these people who half of the readers are likely to hate, but I adored (except Nick, I have mixed feelings about Nick). There's a lot of middle aged female rage here, which is less glamorous than Taylor's version, but equally real. A delightful bitter cocktail of a book.

This book explores Rocky's life and all the changes that come with age.
I really enjoyed this book although towards the end my love for Rocky diminished a little and the book felt a little repetitive towards the end.
I would give this book a solid 4.5 stars
Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC

I absolutely adored her first book, and while this one is splendid in many of the same ways, it’s doesn’t quite stack up. Once again we have a self absorbed, somewhat dreadful but hugely engaging protagonist - Rocky, who is tortured by hormone-induced love for her adult children and decisions made long ago. The family dynamic playing out across a multi-generation holiday on the Cape is absorbing and believeable. But somehow the book lacks a real story, or compelling direction.

I really enjoyed this one. The main character was likeable and the banter between the family members was very enjoyable. Whilst it is funny, it also takes on more somber tones and covers quite important themes.

I really enjoyed this book, it was a very quick and easy read so if you’re looking for something to help with your goodreads challenge this would be a good option.

I think this book is perfect for women who have gone or are going through the same issues, be it family life or menopause and I would definitely buy this book for my mum if I saw it in the shop but for me it just felt a bit chaotic. Being inside someone else’s head who is just as much a worrier as myself made me feel super anxious as if these issues were my own. I felt like I was eavesdropping on another family and like I shouldn’t know their secrets, but that’s probably just very good writing because it all felt very personal!

I enjoyed it, I liked that it was a quick read and that I was left wanting a bit more but I would definitely recommend this more for a slightly older reader.

Catherine Newman's "Sandwich" serves up a perfect blend of humor and heart, capturing the essence of a family's cherished annual getaway to Cape Cod. In this delightful read, we meet Nick and Rocky, parents in their 50s adjusting to their quieter home as early nesters, alongside their young adult children, Jamie and Willa, and Jamie's girlfriend Maya. The family dynamics, explored through a week of vacation, are both relatable and engaging. Newman's portrayal of Rocky's journey through womanhood adds depth and a touch of realism that resonates well beyond the pages, addressing the complexities of aging with a candid and humorous lens. "Sandwich" is more than just a family vacation story; it's a snapshot of life's transitional moments, beautifully told through the lens of everyday adventures and the bonds that hold us together. A fun, heartwarming read that I highly recommend!

3.5 stars

Like all other bibliophiles, I really enjoyed Catherine's previous book, We All Want Impossible Things, and was eager to see how she'd follow it up. And if I'm honest, I'm conflicted.

We All Want Impossible Things was heart-breaking, and I'm sure most of us found ourselves in tears whilst reading it. This didn't have that same effect. I mean, it's a completely different story, completely different angle, it didn't strike me as much, it didn't have as much feeling, for me, as I was expecting and what I wanted.

I'm sure a lot of people will relate to this. I don't have children or ailing parents, so my relation to it is a bit further afield. But there will be many who have adult children who are still dependent, and older parents who need a bit of help. It's very normal and very real, and it is that realism that helps plant your feet into the world she's created.

Let me just say now that this is well written. It's a book that, I assume, didn't need a whole lot of research, it's not set in a fantasy land or with historical scenes or whatnot. It isn't highly detailed. It's an exploration of character more than plot. That could have made it a bit boring, as you normally want escapism with fiction, but I think she's mastered it well. I've said before that I prefer character study over plot anyway, and that is the case here, but even I would have liked just a teeny bit more plot, something to get my teeth into. What is there is fabulous, don't get me wrong, I just wanted a bit more.

I loved how imperfect everyone was. We tend to put fictional characters on a pedestal and make them perfect, but nobody is perfect, and nobody in this book is perfect, and that made it more relatable. We see a range of relationships: husbands and wives, girlfriends and boyfriends, brothers and sisters, mums and dads - so everyone should be able to identify with at least one of the characters, however minimally.

It is hard to rate this book, which is why I generally don't do star ratings. I want to give it 5 stars because the writing is so good, but then there are bits I wasn't keen on and wanted expanding on, so shall we say somewhere between a 3-4? Perhaps a 3.5. I've seen reviews ranging from 3 to 5 stars, so everyone is getting something different from it, which is what you want from a book.

It is a good book, enjoyable and entertaining an interesting, but there were a few things I wanted tidying up, changing, or expanded on for it to reach the same level as her previous book. But I can't hide from the fact that Catherine is one of the finest storytellers around at the moment.

Thanks to Netgalley, Random House & Doubleday for the arc of this beauty of a book.

Catherine Newman has created such a real book - thoughts and feelings and running consciousness throughout made it feel how I feel on busy days when I'm stretched with a list of everyone to sort out but who I love deeply. "I know how you feel Willa says. And this may be the only reason we were put on this earth. To say to each other, I know how you feel. To say, Same. To say, I understand how hard it is to be a parent, a kid.....there are wounds that never really heal, no matter how much time they take."

Family, relationships with others and yourself is at this books core, love and loss "Maybe grief is love imploding. Or maybe it's love expanding". I resonated so much with the pregnancy losses, the wounds that we just carry with us and that become a part of the fabric of the person we become after a loss.

No words will do this book justice, it is impactful, beautifully written and has a genuine realness to it that many many women will be able to relate to very easily. I will recommend forever 💗

I really enjoyed the first half of this, but found the second half a little repetitive and lacking in substance and my sympathies for Rocky waned a little. But overall it is a thought-provoking novel about facing up to lost youth while parenting young adults and worrying about older parents. The sandwich generation to a tee.

Published 6 June 2024. Having read 'We All Want Impossible Things' which I loved so much, I was always going to pick up this new one. While I enjoyed it and it made me smile, sadly, I did not feel the connection to it that felt with 'Impossible Things'. Rocky is in her 50s and is going through the menopause - the descriptions of her journey are so funny at times. She and her husband Nick are on their annual holiday to Cape Cod with their two children, Willa and Jamie, and Jamie's girlfriend, Maya. Joining them on their holiday will be Rocky's parents so she is sandwiched between the young and the elderly. What this book is full of is her love, her overwhelming love for Willa and Jamie - and their love for her even is she is totally inappropriate at times, that she says things without thinking, but they always forgive her because she is 'just Mum'. But, as with most families, there are secrets. Rocky finds that her parents had kept things from her, Nick finds that she has kept things from him and what we have is the ebb and flow of family life as it deals with all of the revelations. But even though this touches upon some deep issues, it is all done with humour. Rocky is larger than life and any woman of a certain age will recognise what she is experiencing at this time of her life; any mother will recognise the overwhelming love she feels and the constant fear that it can all disappear in a heartbeat. And most women will recognise the anger that she feels at times. A read that made me chuckle many times.

I was drawn into this book by the cover alone, but I'm so glad I decided to pick it up. Whilst I'm not necessarily the target demographic, I lapped this one up, and finished it in a day.
All of the relationships fet so real - Rocky and her husband's perfectly imperfect marriage, the revelations of her parents, and ofncourse I loved reading of all of Rocky's interactions with her adult children; such wholesome, interesting conversations, and so respectful of each other.
This novel was funny, relatable and thought provoking all at once, and has left me only wanting more of Catherine Newman's writing.

I love the thought of being in a ‘sandwich’ in life. Caught between some point in adulthood where your kids are grown up and making their own life changing decisions, and your parents who suddenly seem old and vulnerable. These are points which often one is not aware of until some way into them.
I felt this story summed this up well. The vulnerability of the narrator Rocky was very apparent, as she reminisced about past pregnancies, trying to come to terms with loss. What Catherine Newman did so well was highlight how impactful this type of loss is, years after it has happened. Something she was still trying to come to terms with. I also really enjoyed the family dynamics and banter they all had with each other.
However I found Rocky’s narcissist nature - she literally had to know EVERYTHING about her family - grating. Plus even though there were ‘revelations’ not a great deal happened and the plodding pace of the book was just a little too slow for me.

This is a warm, funny tale tinged with sadness narrated by Rocky, a woman in her early fifties on her family’s annual summer vacation to a rental cottage on Cape Cod. There with her are husband Nick, children Jamie and Willa (in their early twenties) and Jamie’s girlfriend Maya. Later they are joined by Rocky’s ageing parents. Whilst there, Rocky reflects on summers gone by when the kids were little, ‘running across the sand with their little pails. Her own parents laughing in their beach chairs, shrinking inside their clothes as the years pass.’

The story is immediately engaging and makes you feel like you are there with them at the beach or in the clam shack as they exchange amiable banter and squabble at the candy store or the bakery over pastry choices. Newman manages to say so much between the lines of this novel about the dynamics within the couples’ marriage, Rocky’s menopausal state of mind and her yearning for past times and past losses.

The dialogue is a real strength of this novel – it pulls you in and makes you feel a part of the narrative. I especially enjoyed the back-and-forth banter between mother and daughter. It felt so authentic that I found myself wondering how much of this story was based on the author’s own familial conversations and experiences.

As the story plays out, it becomes clear there is something that our narrator is not fully sharing with us. She skirts around it but always preludes these sections with the ages her children were when this ‘something’ happened or when the after-effects occurred, e.g. ‘The fall Jamie was five and Willa was not yet two…’ This event is eventually shared with the reader and gives deeper resonance to their time at the beach house, throwing some shade onto their seemingly happy family set-up.

I really enjoyed this book and skipped through it quickly. I preferred it to the author’s previous novel We All Want Impossible Things. Whether that was just because this one resonated with me more I’m not quite sure. This is not a story where a huge amount really happens, so if that’s your jam then avoid. Otherwise, I would highly recommend this one. Double thumbs up from me.

With thanks to both NetGalley and Random House UK, Transworld Publishers for the digital ARC for this review. Sandwich is published in the UK on 6 June ’24.