Doug remains in their home in a neighborhood filled with mostly married couples.  He has a teenage stepson, Russ, who is acting out as he handles his grief.  Russ keeps coming back to Doug and his house rather than going to his birth father.  Doug struggles to play an active “father” role rather than an older peer role, but throughout the book you can see the bond between Doug and Russ is strong.  Doug writes a column about his experience as a young widower and it draws a lot of attention, with his agent even wanting to make a book out of it. Doug expresses how difficult it is to be seeing success with work when he could not care less about it.

Doug’s twin sister Claire, has some life problems of her own and temporarily moves in with Doug.  She starts trying to set him up on dates to get him out in the world again.  Most of the dating adventures don’t go very well.  Doug ends up having an affair with a married neighbor woman, and having intimacy issues with a woman he is dating who he is actually interested in.  Claire does somehow manage to pull Doug and Russ together into more of a family unit and helps motivate Doug to get out of the house a little more.

This is the second book that I have read by Jonathan Tropper and I enjoyed it just as much as the first.  His characters are full of life and you end up really liking them…even when they are a little messed up.  There are parts that are laugh out loud funny and parts that touch you as being hard and true.  I thought it was a fast, enjoyable read.

Judd has just been separated from his wife after finding her in bed with his boss.  He is jobless, living in a bad basement apartment, and feeling pretty down about his life in general.  He is trying to sort out his feelings towards his wife and towards love during this time.  His older brother, Paul, is taking over the family business and nursing resentment towards Judd for an incident years ago that changed the path of his life.  Phillip, the youngest, is affectionately known as the family goof up and surprises everyone by showing up to sit shiva with a much older fiance, who used to be his therapist.  Wendy, is raising three children with a semi-absent husband and coping with the realities of growing older.  The dynamics between the siblings are complicated…but very warm and believable at the same time as being conflicted.  They are typical siblings.  The book is divided into the seven days that the family spends together and you watch as the relationships grow and change during this time.

This story had a lot to offer.  It said things that rang very true to me, even if I never would have said it the same way.  I’m definitely going to try to find other books by Jonathan Tropper.