Alison Fairbrother

Ellie Adler grew up in unconventional home where she would spend summers with her father, James, a poet and college professor, celebrating all the holidays during that time. She recalls fondly her time with him spent tossing a baseball in the yard and watching him hold it while working on his poetry. She is shocked when he dies unexpectedly at age 52.

Ellie is living with roommates and trying to make a living as a journalist when learns of her father's death. The gathering for his will was a mess of different people from his life as he married three times. She is insulted and crestfallen when she is left a glow-in-the-dark ginger man tie rack and his beloved baseball left to a stranger! She sets out on a mission to learn who this mystery person is who inherited the baseball instead of her. She had always thought his poem, "The Catch" meaningful to her. Now, she has to wonder if the poem was about something completely different, remorse or regret possibly?

Thank you NetGalley and Random House for sending this book for review
consideration. All opinions are my own.… (more)

Surprisingly, I kept reading to 59%.

Ellie is a typical, socialist, clueless college graduate. Men are bad. White people are bad. Wealthy people don't deserve to have more than others (never mind that they or their forebears worked for it). Obviously climate change is totally real and the earth will disintegrate before your children or grandchildren can take over. But there is an inherent naive sweetness to her, so I kept reading. Plus, I thought maybe she'd learn some things, which she started to.

I had a bad feeling, though, when Ellie looked through her dead dad's high school yearbook. Ellie identifies the person she believes to be the one to whom her dad's beloved baseball is bequeathed. Ellie details a bit how good looking the man is. Ruh roh, as Scooby would say. I didn't like where this might be going.

And, lo and behold, said man, Larry, tersely walks away from Ellie mentioning that his husband is waiting for him.… (more)