Ellie Adler grew up in unconventional home where she would spend summers with her father, James, a poet and college professor, celebrating all the holidays during that time. She recalls fondly her time with him spent tossing a baseball in the yard and watching him hold it while working on his poetry. She is shocked when he dies unexpectedly at age 52.

Ellie is living with roommates and trying to make a living as a journalist when learns of her father's death. The gathering for his will was a mess of different people from his life as he married three times. She is insulted and crestfallen when she is left a glow-in-the-dark ginger man tie rack and his beloved baseball left to a stranger! She sets out on a mission to learn who this mystery person is who inherited the baseball instead of her. She had always thought his poem, "The Catch" meaningful to her. Now, she has to wonder if the poem was about something completely different, remorse or regret possibly?

Thank you NetGalley and Random House for sending this book for review
consideration. All opinions are my own. ( )

The Catch follows Ellie, a young woman having an affair with a married man and working a dead-end web journalism job, on her quest to find out why her father left her a tie rack instead of his lucky baseball in his will. Its an intriguing premise, but unfortunately none of the characters really come to life in a way that would give this story some emotional heft. Instead, you're left thinking the dead dad is kind of a jerk...and so is the main character. ( )

Surprisingly, I kept reading to 59%.

Ellie is a typical, socialist, clueless college graduate. Men are bad. White people are bad. Wealthy people don't deserve to have more than others (never mind that they or their forebears worked for it). Obviously climate change is totally real and the earth will disintegrate before your children or grandchildren can take over. But there is an inherent naive sweetness to her, so I kept reading. Plus, I thought maybe she'd learn some things, which she started to.

I had a bad feeling, though, when Ellie looked through her dead dad's high school yearbook. Ellie identifies the person she believes to be the one to whom her dad's beloved baseball is bequeathed. Ellie details a bit how good looking the man is. Ruh roh, as Scooby would say. I didn't like where this might be going.

And, lo and behold, said man, Larry, tersely walks away from Ellie mentioning that his husband is waiting for him. ( )

An interesting book. Maybe even a great book but it just fell apart at the end. We were a happier world in 2012 ( )

Every time this book came to the top of the pile I ignored it for something else. Something told me I wasn’t going to be over the moon and unfortunately my premonition was valid. I didn’t find the protagonist, Eleanor Adler sympathetic. Her love and devotion to her father was not only admirable but the crux of this story. Her attempt to understand his ultimate betrayal is going to prove to be a heartbreaking journey to revelation and understanding.

Be careful of what you seek. Be careful and cognizant of those you place on a pedestal without having all the pertinent background information. Be careful when you selectively parse the available information to spin the story to fit your delusions. Be careful when you seek answers for your edification alone without considering the collateral damage that you may cause. Be careful when you base a story on bequests that include records, pictures, a tie rack and a baseball. Losing a beloved parent is understandably an earth shaking loss from which recovery is a daily struggle. Facing our mortality and making sure those we leave behind never have to question our love and commitment is so important and so missing from this story. Coming of age, acknowledging love, loss, confusion and misinterpretation wasn’t enough to save this story for me.

Thank you Random House and NetGalley for a copy. ( )