(54)The Floating Feldmans by Elyssa Friedland

Thursday, July 25, 2019



Annette Feldman doesn't get to see her family very often.  Her daughter, Elise, lives on the other side of the country with her husband and two kids.  Her son, Freddy, lives in Colorado doing God-knows-what.  She decides that for her seventieth birthday, she wants them all to be together.  She decides to take the family on a cruise. The family who hasn't spent more than twenty-four hours together in a very long time. What Annette doesn't realize is that both of her children are keeping secrets from her, secrets that don't fit her perception of the children she raised. Elise has a shopping addiction and Freddy is a marijuana tycoon.   Getting this family on the open seas for a full week may be Annette's dream-come-true,  but for the Feldman siblings, it is their worst nightmare. Will they make it through the week unscathed? Or will this trip be the thing that fractures the Feldman family forever?

I was eager to see how the Feldman family would fare on the open seas.  We just took our kids on a cruise last month, thankfully we are not the Feldman family and our kids are 19 and 21.  For many reasons, our family came through much better than the Feldmans.    None of the Feldmans really elicited that "warm and fuzzy" feeling from me. Annette was an overbearing mother who didn't really have a good relationship with anybody but her husband.  Elise and her husband seemed like a nice couple, but their lack of communication drove me nuts.   I felt bad for Freddy because his entire family had this image of him as a screw-up.  Somebody living hand-to-mouth and didn't have a dime to his name.   He ended up proving them all wrong quite the satisfying fashion, but it still annoyed me.   I loved seeing all of the jokes and references to cruise ship life.  Like the endless food, the swimming pools, and casinos.  More than once I found myself laughing out loud and the observations and scenarios.   They hit the nail on the head!     As funny and entertaining as I found The Floating Feldmans, at the heart of the book, is a mother who just wants to connect with her family.  And eventually, Annette gets what she so desperately wants.

Bottom Line - The Floating Feldmans was a fun and amusing book about a dysfunctional family on a cruise ship. Even if you have never been on a cruise ship, I assure you that you will find this book highly entertaining.

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