The Admissions by Meg Mitchell Moore

 

Those looking in from the outside envy the Hawthorne family.  They live in a suburb of San Francisco in a lovely home.  The parents both have good jobs.  Gabe is a business consultant and Nora is a top-notch realtor.  They have three healthy and happy girls.  

But an inch below the surface, things don't look as good.  The eldest daughter, Angela is a senior in high school.  She is class valedictorian, active in sports and outside activities and has her heart set on Harvard.  But she is always exhausted and has little time to have a social life.  She has tons of homework every day after she finishes all her practices and charitable hours.  Anxiously, she wonders if she can really make it into the golden circle of Harvard admittees.

Cecily is the middle daughter.  She is obsessed with Irish dancing and considered an expert at it; something that requires hours of practices and classes.  Maya, the youngest girl, is in second grade and still not reading, getting bullied by her classmates about it.  Nora's career is always precarious dependent on whether or not she can sell the next house.  Gabe's saddled with an intern from hell who has managed to uncover his deepest secret and is trying to use it to blackmail herself into a permanent job.  Can the Hawthorne's keep all the plates spinning?

Meg Mitchell Moore has nailed the exhaustion and constant striving that success in America requires of families.  Children are overscheduled and set higher and higher bars to be considered a success.  Parents constantly balance careers and family responsibilities, spending hours after work trying to get everything done so that everyone can be everywhere they need to be.  Readers will probably recognize much of their own lives in that of the Hawthornes and read avidly to see how they solve the pressures of modern life.  This book is recommended for readers of family relationship novels.