Join Goodreads

and meet your next favorite book!

Sign Up Now

The Most Fun We Ever Had

by

3.97 42,598 ratings 5,240 reviews
Your Rating (Clear)
  • Cancel
A multigenerational novel in which the four adult daughters of a Chicago couple--still madly in love after forty years--recklessly ignite old rivalries until a long-buried secret threatens to shatter the lives they've built.

When Marilyn Connolly and ... More
A multigenerational novel in which the four adult daughters of a Chicago couple--still madly in love after forty years--recklessly ignite old rivalries until a long-buried secret threatens to shatter the lives they've built.

When Marilyn Connolly and David Sorenson fall in love in the 1970s, they are blithely ignorant of all that's to come. By 2016, their four radically different daughters are each in a state of unrest: Wendy, widowed young, soothes herself with booze and younger men; Violet, a litigator-turned-stay-at-home-mom, battles anxiety and self-doubt when the darkest part of her past resurfaces; Liza, a neurotic and newly tenured professor, finds herself pregnant with a baby she's not sure she wants by a man she's not sure she loves; and Grace, the dawdling youngest daughter, begins living a lie that no one in her family even suspects. Above it all, the daughters share the lingering fear that they will never find a love quite like their parents'.

As the novel moves through the tumultuous year following the arrival of Jonah Bendt--given up by one of the daughters in a closed adoption fifteen years before--we are shown the rich and varied tapestry of the Sorensons' past: years marred by adolescence, infidelity, and resentment, but also the transcendent moments of joy that make everything else worthwhile. Less

Friends’ Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up .

Community Reviews

Average rating 3.97  ·  42,598 ratings  ·  5,240 reviews

rated it it was ok
10 months ago

The Most Fun We Ever Had grew on me like a rash: the more I read this book the more I grew firm in my opinion that not only did I dislike it, but that I in fact actively hated it. Its bloated length⁠—532 pages⁠—is almost designed to make its every fault as glaring and gratin ...more

rated it really liked it
about 1 year ago

So this one was (maybe) a 3.5 ⭐️ read for me. It took me almost 2 weeks to finish this 500+ page family saga. If I'm to be honest I found myself bored at times and absolutely enthralled at others. There were times when I put the book down and read another book in its entiret ...more

rated it really liked it
about 1 year ago

3.75 stars rounded up.
I’ll get it out upfront. At over 500 pages, this novel is just way too long. Granted, it’s a family saga covering decades with multiple narratives of a husband and wife, their four grown daughters and a fifteen year old grandson who comes into the mix.
...more

rated it really liked it
over 1 year ago

The author of this novel is an old soul. Lombardo deeply understands marriage, sisterhood and plain old ordinary family dysfunction which is present on every character driven page. From the outside, the parents’ marriage seems flawless. Naturally, from the inside it is not w ...more

rated it really liked it
6 months ago

Another dysfunctional family book , 500 pages long, 4 daughters who are mostly annoying and unbearable, bring it on, this is one of the most challenging experience for me! ( Reading Goldfinch was not challenge, it was long and all those amazing sentences needed to absorb slo ...more

rated it it was ok
about 1 year ago

I usually don’t write reviews but my disappointment in the book was so huge it inspired me to write one. I do NOT understand all the 4 and 5 star reviews this book received. A summary of this book in a nutshell: David and Marilyn are incredibly clueless on how ill-prepared t ...more

rated it it was amazing
over 1 year ago

An easy 5 stars for me. This is about as good as character driven family sagas get!

I hope you have the ability to clear your schedule. The Sorenson's will instantly grab you and won't let go until the very last page. I love character driven family saga/dramas and this one ha
...more

rated it really liked it
6 months ago

this imperfect story realistically captures the essence of the imperfect complexities of marriage, parenthood, sisterly bonds, and familial ties.

and reading this long family saga felt very much like a family - quite entertaining at times but has its boring moments, you want
...more

rated it really liked it
8 months ago

Second read from the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction longlist.

The most engaging aspect of this multi-generational drama is the authenticity of its characters. Complex and imperfect, simmering with jealousy, impulsive and turbulent. Some actively engage in avoidance while othe
...more

rated it it was amazing
about 1 year ago

My Lord, did I love this novel. Imagine a perfectly crafted mash-up of LITTLE WOMEN and THE CORRECTIONS. Hilarious one moment, haunting the next, and always -- always -- so authentic and deeply felt. Claire Lombardo has given us all a spectacular gift: the Sorenson family.

Readers Also Enjoyed

Book details

Hardcover, 532 pages
Published June 25th 2019 by Doubleday Books
ISBN
0385544251 (ISBN13: 9780385544252)
Edition language
English
Original title
The Most Fun We Ever Had
Literary Awards
Women's Prize for Fiction, Goodreads Choice Award

About this author

1,008 followers
CLAIRE LOMBARDO earned her MFA in fiction at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She was born and raised in Oak Park, Illinois, and spent several years doing social work in Chicago.

Genres

Articles featuring this book

The 32 Buzziest New Debuts to Discover Now

This year is proving to be an amazing time to discover debut authors. Across genres, readers have found and championed work by...
69 likes · 17 comments

Quotes

The thing that nobody warned you about adulthood was the number of decisions you’d have to make, the number of times you’d have to depend on an unreliable gut to point you in the right direction, the number times you’d still feel like an eight-year-old, waiting for your parents to step in and save you from peril.
It’s funny,” her mom continued. “I think so much of making a relationship work has to do with choosing to be kind even when you may not feel like it. It sounds like the most obvious thing in the world but it’s much easier said than done, don’t you think?
Maybe another person couldn’t irrevocably save you, but they could sometimes calm you down, and that felt like an exquisitely magical thing.

Discussions