Review: All We Knew

All We Knew by Jamie Beck
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hunter Cabot is the CFO of his family's tea business, the Cabot Tea Company or CTC. His father is CEO, his father's second wife Jenna is head of marketing. He and his wife Sara have been married 10 years and are trying to have a baby without success, as the book opens they are involved in their third round of IVF, Sara is superstitious and 100% focused on having a baby. Hunter on the other hand has just been told by his father that he is entertaining the idea of selling the family business to a huge conglomerate, reneging on his promise to keep the business in the family and pass it on to Hunter.

Hunter and Sara are drowning in angst. He has abandonment issues following his parents' divorce when he was a child, his default is to try to fix things, to make grand romantic gestures, his father's volte face rocks him to his core and he feels deeply betrayed. Hunter is barely holding it together, it seems as though he is being assaulted, falling short, on every front. He feels frustrated that his father and Jenna have blocked his ideas for expanding CTC and now they are trying to sell the business that he has spent his life learning to run.

Sara has given up her high-flying job in marketing because she was concerned that the stress was preventing her from conceiving, but six months later still no pregnancy. Her entire life is now wrapped around trying to get pregnant and yet her husband seems to be more concerned with office politics and fighting with Jenna than creating their own family. He spends less time at home and more time at the office, talks to her less and in the back of Sara's mind is jealousy about his assistant.

This book was dripping in angst and frankly by the end I found both Sara and Hunter to be whiny, self-absorbed, sanctimonious bores.

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