Now I'll Tell You Everything

After more than two dozen books over twenty-eight years, the Alice series comes to an end here. This ambitious (to say the least) concluding installment begins with Alice McKinley headed off to college and the rest of her life. Naylor covers a lot of ground: college (including the oft-discussed loss of Alice’s “V card”), a short-lived engagement, rekindling an old flame (spoiler: it’s Patrick), grad school, her wedding (spoiler: it’s Patrick), her career, the birth of her children, balancing work and family, travel adventures, and on and on until she’s a sixty-year-old grandmother. Through it all, Alice remains the steady, thoughtful, levelheaded character readers have always seen as a trusted friend. Because of the scope of the novel, the narrative reads at times like a primer for Life Events or a Passages 2.0, which the earlier books are at heart but in much more manageable—and relatable—doses. Whether teen readers will care much about Alice’s middle-aged issues is debatable, and perhaps that’s why more than half the book is devoted to her life before age thirty (more than two hundred pages alone on her college years). But fans desperate to know how everything turns out for Alice and the gang may be satisfied with this comprehensive series ender. kitty flynn