Editors’ pick Best Books of the Year 2019
Book Blurb:
How much can a family forgive?
Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope, rookie NYPD cops, are neighbors in the suburbs. What happens behind closed doors in both houses—the loneliness of Francis’s wife, Lena, and the instability of Brian’s wife, Anne, sets the stage for the explosive events to come.
In Mary Beth Keane’s extraordinary novel, a lifelong friendship and love blossoms between Kate Gleeson and Peter Stanhope, born six months apart. One shocking night their loyalties are divided, and their bond will be tested again and again over the next thirty years. Heartbreaking and redemptive, Ask Again, Yes is a gorgeous and generous portrait of the daily intimacies of marriage and the power of forgiveness.
My Review:
Oh, look! It’s me swimming upstream again!
This is an intergenerational story that is told from multiple POVs. It starts out well with a hook regarding the two children that will grow into adulthood and through their children as well in a span of thirty years.
Peter and Kate are drawn to each other for some unfathomable reason after Peter moves nearby with his family. While Kate’s mother is happy and excited to welcome Peter’s mother to the neighborhood, Peter’s mother wants none of it and refuses attempts at being friendly neighbors. Both fathers are officers in the local police department.
Peter’s mother has taken a strong disliking toward Kate when the kids become teenagers and what starts as a small altercation escalates into a horrific tragedy for both families.
It’s a tragedy that will mark all members of both families the rest of their lives. After that whole scene is over, the rest of the story mumbles on until the reader is hoping for something…anything…just not more tragedy. But that’s what you get.
This reminded me of the years, generations ago, when the two in a totally miserable marriage but stayed together “for the children.”
That only served to make the children as miserable as the adults and colored the children’s relationships for the rest of their lives. And so it does here. The two cops were both Irish, initially bonded over that background, and along with that culture the alcohol associations.
I thought the pace to be agonizingly slow and felt most sorry for Kate. I couldn’t invest in either of the fathers, Peter’s mother was just dreadful, and I felt would never again be ready to be unleashed on society. Peter was so damaged, I just didn’t want to hear it. Somewhere in the middle, the plot broad jumped the timeline, which distracted the storyline forcing the reader to play catch up.
Sorry, but I just found it depressing and kept thinking about the kids—digesting this dysfunction until you can believe that if that’s what they learned, they’ll pass it on to the next generation. UGH.
It’s dark, full of flawed characters that even the ending only seemed to make worse. There were questions unanswered and nothing resolved. I breathed a sigh of relief when the end was declared.
This book was rather controversial with readers on both sides but Amazon awarded an Editors’ pick for Best Books of 2019. So you can decide whether this family life fiction is for you or not. I can’t recommend.
Many thanks to my local library for providing me with the opportunity to listen to and review this audiobook. The thoughts expressed here are my own.
Rosepoint Publishing: Two point Three Stars 
Book Details:
Genre: Coming of Age Fiction, Family Life Fiction
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Narrator: Molly Pope
Release Date: May 28, 2019
Title Links:
Amazon-US | Amazon-UK | Barnes & Noble | Kobo
The Author: Mary Beth Keane is the author of five novels, including Ask Again, Yes, which was a New York Times Best Seller, The Tonight Show Summer Reads pick, and has been translated into twenty-two languages. Keane was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in the Creative Arts, and has received citations from the National Book Foundation, PEN, and the Hemingway Society. Her new novel, Whale Harbor, is forthcoming from Scribner Books on September 29, 2026.
©2026 V Williams
Rosepoint Publishing 