Wreck

 

Wreck by Catherine Newman

Fiction

2025

Finished on May 13, 2026

Rating: 4/5 (Very Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

The acclaimed bestselling author of Sandwich is back with a wonderful novel, full of laughter and heart, about marriage, family, and what happens when life doesn’t go as planned.

If you loved Rocky and her family on vacation on Cape Cod, wait until you join them at home two years later. And if this is your first meeting with this crew, get ready to laugh and cry--and relate.

Rocky, still anxious, nostalgic, and funny, is living in Western Massachusetts with her husband, Nick, and their daughter, Willa, who's back home after college. Their son, Jamie, has taken a new job in New York, and Mort, Rocky's widowed father, has moved in.

It all couldn't be more ridiculously normal... until Rocky finds herself obsessed with a local accident that only tangentially affects their family--and with a medical condition that, she hopes, won't affect them at all.

With her signature wit and wisdom, Catherine Newman explores the hidden rules of family, the heavy weight of uncertainty, and the gnarly fact that people--no matter how much you love them--are not always exactly who you want them to be.

Wreck marks the third book that I've read by Catherine Newman. I loved her debut novel We All Want Impossible Things, as well as Sandwich, both of which earned perfect 5-star ratings from me. Newman's stories are so relatable, and I love her humor, laughing out loud on several occasions as I read Wreck. It was fun revisiting Rocky and her family (from Sandwich), but the book wasn't quite as good as her previous novels. I look forward to re-reading her earlier works, and I have a copy of Waiting for Birdy, which I plan to read for Nonfiction November. I also subscribe to her Substack, which is both informative and funny. She's one of those authors that I'd love to be friends with!

A few favorite passages:

When kids willingly re-create parts of their childhood, it feels like such a vote of confidence: cotton sheets, thrift shopping, the good organic olive oil we've always gotten. And then you have to not be offended when they get the other brand of butter or their toilet paper unrolls from the wrong direction or they make smoothies with juice instead of coconut milk.

and

Have you ever taken an elderly parent to a juice bar? No? Don't start now.

The line is long, and my dad squints at the menu behind the counter. "Is pitaya just a different spelling of papaya?" he asks. It's not. "So what's pitaya, then?" I don't actually know. What is collagen? Ashwagandha? Wheatgrass? "Are maca and matcha the same thing?" I say I don't think so. "Is cacko just cocoa?" Cuh-COW. And yes. "Why do they spell it like that?" He's seen it in the crossword puzzle before, but not in real life. "Are cuh-COW nibs like chocolate chips?" Not as much as you might hope. What is goji? What is spirulina? Because he doesn't hear well, we're shouting at at him, and I can hear how abusive it sounds--like we're bullying an old man with a verbal catalogue of superfoods.

and 

The intake person asks a trillion questions to make sure I don't have secret metal in my body that will shoot up into my brain and kill me as soon as the magnet's on....She runs through her list: 'Artificial limbs or joints? Pacemaker? Defibrillator? Insulin pump? Shrapnel?...Do you have an older IUD?' she asks, and I think, Do I? God, did I ever get my IUD removed? A relic from a different time, like the expired ketchup in the back of the fridge from when the kids were eight. 'Oh,' I say remembering, 'I think it fell out on its own at some point.'

and

His personality is very cross that bridge when you come to it. Mine is very apply to engineering school in case there's a bridge that might need crossing but it hasn't been designed yet.

and

Remember the world from back when you couldn't even find out if you had strep throat without a doctor calling the wall phone in your kitchen? Now you just click into your computer and discover that you have cancer - or that you have - I'm seeing this now - a white-blood-cell disorder called leukopenia - or that they've scheduled your autopsy.

I wholeheartedly agree with Kirkus Reviews:

​"Newman excels at showing how sorrow and joy coexist in everyday life. She masterfully balances a modern exploration of grief with truly laugh-out-loud lines . . . . A heartbreaking, laugh-provoking, and absolutely Ephron-esque look at the beauty and fragility of everyday life." 

Recommend.