June has just retired, but her life as a retiree isn't how she'd imagined it would be. For starters, her three grown children still live at home. This is a book about a family with so many issues -- single parenthood, adoption, dementia, lesbianism, -- yet they love each other and somehow muddle through.

This book is often very funny even while dealing with serious issues. Because even serious issues can be dealt with when your family has your back.

Well done! ( )

3.5 stars

June has just retired, but with her and Randy’s three adult children still living at home (though they’ve been trying to get rid of them for a while!), there’s not much time to relax. When she is trying to get her kids to help her clean the basement, her youngest son, Derek, gets a phone call. He needs to go to the hospital because Marissa is having her baby. Who is Marissa, June wonders, but they pile in the car to be there with Derek. Soon, Derek is home with a baby he’d only found out a week or so earlier that he was the father of. Daughter Vanessa seems to have a much older girlfriend – who new Vanessa was a lesbian!? Not June, nor Randy. Both June and Randy also have their own family issues going on at the same time…

This was a whirlwind! I liked it, but I’m sure happy to live alone. All that activity was crazy and would drive me insane! I like my quiet life. There was humour mixed in here and there, as well. This is a local author to me, so it’s always fun to read about places I know in my city. ( )

This family is such a train wreck you just can’t stop reading. Their story is filled with chaos and love 💕 ( )

Sometimes it is just so darn hard to get the children to leave the nest. As Nim as ls a don't seem to have these problems, do they? For June and Randy Figg, now retired, wanting to downdize, maybe take a few trips together, this is the Crux of their problem. Their three grown children, despite some gentle, and some not so gentle prodding, just don't seem to get the message. Or if they do get it, just don't seem willing to act on it. Well, since they are all still here, it might be a good time to get the basement cleared of a lifetimes deitrus, deposited by various family members, after all, to sell thd house this would have to be done. So all in the basement together, getting little done actually as it seems as if item invokes a trip down memory lane, when a phone call changes everything.

Within a matter of pages this book had me in stitches, oh my goodness but I could relate to this family. Plus, it is just so hard, but wonderful when it happens, to find a funny book. A dysfunctional family, yes definitely, but aren't all families to some extent? The parts where the children, well grown adults, turn on each other, spilling secrets they had on each other but have kept from each other. Yep, happened here and while they definitely gave me pause when I was told, I'm glad I didn't know about them at the time.

There are deeper issues at play too, adoption, both adopted and sdoptee, single Parenthood, a same sex relationship with an older women, and a younger son possibly addicted to porn. This family comes apart, redefines itself, and comes together again because make no mistake, these Figgs they love each other. A wonderful, charming, humorous look at a family with many flaws, secrets and much love.

ARC from Netgalley. ( )

Ali Bryan has concocted a story that is wacky, zany, a bit off the wall and sometimes outrageous. Meet the Figgs, a family with more issues than there are pages in this book. June and Randy, parents who wish their children would grow up, move, out and move on, but maybe not too quickly. Tom, Vanessa and Derek, siblings whose personalities collide but who have each other’s backs when the need arises. Adoption, single parenting, Gay relationships, dementia, each subject finds a place in this story.

I was completely conflicted about this book. It was laugh out loud funny in places, it was sad and wistful in other parts, completely believable and absolutely unbelievable.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Freehand Books for a copy. ( )