Families and Other Nonreturnable Gifts

By: Claire LaZebnik

Narrated by: Tessa Auberjonois

Despite her name, Keats Sedlak is the sanest person in her large, nutty family of brilliant eccentrics. Her parents, both brainy academics, are barely capable of looking after themselves, let alone anyone else, and her two uber-intelligent siblings live on their own planets.

At least she can count on one person in her life, her devoted boyfriend Tom. Down-to-earth and loving, he's the one thing that's kept Keats grounded for the last decade. But when Keats's mother makes a surprise announcement, the entire family is sent into a tailspin. For the first time, Keats can't pick up the pieces by herself. Now she must reevaluate everything she's ever assumed about herself and her family - and make the biggest decision of her life.

©2013 Claire LaZebnik (P)2013 Hachette Audio

Family-focused, chick-lit dramedy

Writing a plot that is primarily based on internal conflict, in this case, Keats’s constantly comparing herself unfavorably—or snarkily viewing herself as superior—to others, can become tedious if not done really well. Fortunately, LaZebnik does this type of writing very well indeed.

It is almost a given that every first-person narrator in a novel will, in various degrees, be an “unreliable narrator,” and all chick lit protagonists are strongly so. In this regard, Keats is, in turn, both irritating and amusing due to how extremely unreliable a narrator she is at the start of the book. In some ways, this novel is analogous to a first-person-POV mystery novel, in that the reader is exploring a series of clues along with Keats as she slowly figures out who and what her family members, a long time family friend named Jacob, and her boyfriend of the past 10 years, Tom, are really like, and who she is in relation to each of them.

Currently, this is the only book that LaZebnik has written that is available in audiobook format, through Amazon and Audible. Not all novels can stand up to the slow pace involved in listening to audio narration compared to racing through a book by reading it silently to oneself. However, this particular novel is well enough written to withstand that spotlight. It is narrated by talented voice actor, Tessa Auberjonois, who does an excellent job.