The Last Romantics: A Novel

I wanted to know more as too why she never wanted to see her nephew. Who was this young Luna? Her nephews kid? Did she have the ring? It was a good book but I would have liked more information

At first too similar to another title I read recently and then some past and present back and forth and finally a comfortable conclusion.

I wanted to put it down at times but I’m glad to have stayed with it. Interesting characters and their life choices.

A book full of emotion , leaves you satisfied since the character development is superb.

will there be a part 2 to this book? so many questions unanswered.

Wonderful to read and listen at the same time. Fabulous writing!

First 40% was good. Last 60% of this family saga dragged.

The best character in the book was Joe and, unfortunately, we didn't really get to know him that well since the book was written in 1st person and we only got to hear what one of his three sisters, Fiona, wanted to tell us.

The Last Romantics was a good book. It did throw me for a bit when it opened with the year being 2079. I enjoyed reading about the relationships between the four siblings starting in childhood and continuing as they were adults. I also liked that it was broken down into different sections and that the years were listed where the events took place. The book was well-paced and I enjoyed reading it.

Excellent, multilayered story about love. Beautifully written and audio book narration was fantastic.

The Last Romantics is a beautiful, poetic story. It opens with an old woman, Fiona Skinner, giving a poetry reading / talk in year 2079. The future seems vaguely apocalyptic but it’s never explored too much. This book is not about the future - it’s about the past. Through Fiona’s talk and memories, the book moves backward in time to her childhood and young adulthood, tracing her life as well as those of her siblings. The Skinner family is a curious bunch, touched by tragedy but also marked with great love. Their story explores the ideas of who we are as people - and if our identity changes when broken away from our family and loved ones. This story changes focal point and setting many times throughout its pages but each transition is done extremely smoothly. Not once did I feel thrown out of the story, and I am very sensitive to that. An advance copy of this book was provided to me, free of charge, by the publisher. All thoughts are my own.

The last paragraphs of the book say it all, listen to the last then go back and start it… it will make you sit up and pay attention.

Hidden in this novel is a page-turning dysfunctional family tale (and I love these), but the framework and too many subplots makes it a bit ungainly. The novel begins in 2079 where a 102 year old poet, Fiona Skinner, living in a world beset by climate change issues is giving a lecture about her body of work. She begins to tell the story of her family, her father passes suddenly when she is young and her mother, seeped in depression during a period she and her siblings call The Pause, the four Skinner children are left to fend for themselves. The oldest, Renee carries the burden of parenting her siblings, becomes an ambitious and hard driving physician. The second daughter, Caroline, marries the boy next door, devotes her life to her husband and family and in middle age decides to live for herself, divorcing and striking out; Joe, the only boy, is a golden child in his youth but there are episodes that forewarn possible mental health issues. A Wall Street phenom, he succumbs to the lure of drugs and money and his NYC career downfall leads him to move to Miami where the culmination of the story takes place. Finally, Fiona, the youngest recounts her youth and realizes in her maturity that her point of view on events as they happened were both naive and sheltered from hard truths. The plot moved along well but the framework of a young woman asking a question at a lecture, the climate calamitous future and several meandering tendrils of story drive the plot toward the end of the narrative, but not necessarily a toward a satisfying conclusion. I received an advanced copy of this book from the publisher via LibraryThing's early reviewer program in exchange for an honest review. Thanks!

Boring ,no message from godless people ,sad ,empty lives a waste of time

The Last Romantics: Confession while the world collapses

Tara Conklin’s novel, book-ended by inferred scenes of the end of the world surprised me by being both vivid and intense. The Last Romantics was paced just right- I did not burn through the pages, while keeping a solid cadence.

In 2079, poet Fiona Skinner stands before a crowd of fans and critics. She is 102 years old, answering questions about her life long work as an author. From the crowd comes a young woman, asking after the origin of her namesake (Luna) from Fiona’s most famous work ‘The Love Poem’.

Fiona, amidst power outages and emergency sirens, narrates the history of the Skinners from the death of their father to a wedding ring with no bride.

Well crafted novel.

This slow-moving, character-driven novel had some good elements to it, but it missed the mark for me. Some of the characters are flawed in peculiar ways, with questionable morals, and I just couldn’t warm up to them. The story begins with the death of the father, and death and how people cope with grief will figure in much of the story. Depression, anger, unhappiness, drug abuse, and deceit are all present in the tale, but are somewhat balanced by some good memories of happy times along the way. Readers learn about the characters through some lengthy flashbacks, and the conclusion of the story will wrap up most of the story threads. The main characters were well developed, and the writing was good for a plot that was more about about characters’ reactions than an intricate storyline.

The complicated sibling relationships made this one memorable. Covers depression, multi-generations, and drug addiction.

Sibling stories are never my favorite, but the author can certainly turn a phrase.

Excellent book. Loved the relationships of the siblings.

Well done. Great story.

This was a very interesting book. In a way the plot is straightforward but the characters are so well done that it makes the plot all the more interesting. I'm not so sure that it needed the chapters that covered the year 2079 but there weren't that many of them so it wasn't that distracting.

There are four Skinner siblings in Tara Conklin's The Last Romantics. Renee is the oldest, the responsible one. Caroline, the next oldest, is soft-hearted and traditional. Then Joe, the only boy, the gifted athlete, the apple of everyone's eye. And finally Fiona, the baby. The Skinners are a happy family until they're not: when their father dies in an accident, their mother Noni finds out that they're not as well off as she thought, and the loss of not only her husband but the life she thought she had achieved pitches her into a deep depression. They downsize, and Noni takes to her bed. For a couple years. The Skinner children are more or less left to raise themselves during what they come to call The Pause.The seeds of what will become of them are planted during The Pause. Renee takes her responsibilities to take care of the others seriously, and becomes dedicated to achieving at a level that will keep anyone from guessing what's going on at home, setting her down a path towards becoming a doctor. Caroline falls in with a neighbor family, forming a bond with one of their boys that will deepen into romance and marriage. Joe's talent and good looks ensure that his outward needs are met, even if he struggles to process his trauma. And Fiona learns to observe, a skill that comes in handy as she becomes a writer and poet. Noni does recover, and the family seems more or less intact, but the damage that's been done can't be undone.I was biased towards this one from the start: this kind of following-a-group-of-characters-over-time thing is something I absolutely love in a book. I tend to find that the books that stay with me the most are ones where character is first and foremost, and this book is all about character. The siblings and their relationships feel complicated and real. Though they all had moments of being their worst selves, their behaviors felt rooted in how their experiences, particularly during their childhoods, interacted with their innate personalities. I also appreciated that the book never felt the need to have there be a dramatic confrontation between the children and their mother...it generally leaned away from melodrama rather than leaning into it, and I think there are plenty of families that do just try their best to forget the bad moments and move on.As much as I loved this book for the most part, there were some plot elements that kept me from considering it truly great. First was the idea that The Pause could go on for multiple years without anyone really noticing. As much as Renee was able to serve in loco parentis to her younger siblings, there are things like doctor's visits and parent-teacher conferences and signing up for extracurriculars that seem like they could have been patched over for a while but not for as long as Conklin asked us to believe. And then there was the framing device, which featured a very elderly Fiona (in a world where global climate change has changed things for the worse) interacting with a young woman who might have a connection to the Skinners. This did strike me as a little too convenient and neat. On the whole, though, this is a lovely book about the bonds between siblings and would be perfect for a reader who loves well-realized characters. I very much enjoyed it and highly recommend it!

The thing about The Last Romantics that hooked me from the beginning was the name Luna. The mysterious Luna had something to do with Fiona's brother's "incident" and I couldn't stop turning pages to find out how. But this isn't a mystery or even a suspense novel; it's a family history, starting from Fiona's childhood, through the Pause when her mother's depression left Fiona and her siblings to fend for themselves and develop bonds between them that would prove tenuous in later years, to the distant future when an elderly Fiona is recounting the whole story through her poetry. I enjoyed reading this book through it's meandering beginnings to its sweeping ending.

This is the story of a family, primarily of the four siblings from when they are very young right through to the end of their lives. This is a very softly spoken story and moves at a relaxed pace. No page turning action here, but what you get instead is highly developed characters with complex relationships. You really bond with these siblings, worrying about them in times of trouble and rejoicing with them in times of joy. You become part of the family. I found it to be a really comforting reading experience with themes of the nurturing individual personalities within a family and accepting that life is an ever changing experience that is rarely all good or all bad. The end is fully wrapped up - not necessarily with a bow but very complete and satisfying anyway.

The character development in this book was fantastic! I felt like I knew all of the siblings. After I received this book it started to have so much buzz and such high ratings! I think this book would be an ideal Book Club book because there is so much to discuss. The siblings make life choices, good and bad, as well as the family dynamic, childhood expectations, etc.

I love a good family saga and The Last Romantics was one of the best I have read it a long time. It seems most sagas are historical, but this one was more contemporary because it was told by Fiona from 2079 looking back on her life, so most of the story took place in the late 70s through about 2010. It helps that those were memorable years for me as well. The story is primarily about three sisters and a brother, all with different personalities, so I believe most readers will be able to identify with one of the characters. This was one book I didn't want to end.

The story of 4 siblings whose lives were shaped by a period of time called "the pause" after their father's death and another tragedy once they are adults. I liked the story and I felt the pacing and revealing of their lives was told in an engaging manner. This was mostly told via the youngest sister Fiona. One complaint was that I felt like I would have liked to know her better as a character.

This story takes you through the life of a poet and her family. I found myself both bored and intrigued at any given minute while reading it. There were parts that I felt it really slogged through the mud, so to speak, then other parts that were insightful and interesting. Overall, I'm happy to have read this story, it was a good one.

Loved this book. The family dynamic amongst the siblings was perfectly balanced and complex while remaining relatable to the reader. While set in the future this story provided a non dystopia realistic preview of what the future could be while offering lookbacks to current time and the switch between present and past was done well and seemed fluid. Now I want to read Conklin’s other highly reviewed book, House Girl.

I really enjoyed this book about four siblings who lose their father and have to raise themselves and each other during the years their mother is in a depression afterwards. I felt that each character was unique and well drawn and I enjoyed reading about their relationships with one another and with the world as they each moved into and thru adulthood. The book begins in 2079 from the perspective of the youngest sibling, a poet who is giving a talk. The author drops many tidbits in these 2079 sections about how the world has changed and what like is life but we never get a very full picture of this. I found this aspect of the novel fascinating and wished this had been developed more. I would recommend this book.

This was a beautifully written family saga involving four siblings and there sometimes present, mother. The story actually begins in the future with the youngest sibling Fiona, now 102 years old. She is finally able to tell her story.

The four siblings go through ups and downs and yet they remain in each other's life for the most part. It's an intensely moving story of their how fragile they are and yet how intensely strong they can become with the support of each other.

I really enjoyed every bit of this book. Renee, Caroline, Joe and Fiona were all characters one can relate to. I definitely will be adding the author's first book, The House Girl on my to read list!