The Last Romantics by Tara Conklin is a novel about an East Coast American family shattered by and ultimately brought together through loss. It took me a while to get into this book as I found it hard to care much for any of the characters.

The youngest of four siblings, Fiona becomes a poet of some renown, and near the end of her life she is asked to tell the inspiration for her most famous work, The Love Poem; thus she begins looking back and telling her family’s story. Although I found the characters often disagreeable and their decisions questionable, it is perhaps a true picture of family life in all its pain and dysfunction. In the end it is really a novel about Love, all types of Love, and as cliche as this may sound, this is what ultimately saves this book. An OK read.