All Together Now by Gill Hornby Genres: Fiction, Family Life, Contemporary Women
Publication Date: July 21st 2015
Pages: 336
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The small town of Bridgeford is in crisis. Downtown is deserted, businesses are closing, and the idea of civic pride seems old-fashioned to residents rushing through the streets to get somewhere else. Bridgeford seems to have lost its heart.
But there is one thing that just might unite the community--music. The local choir, a group generally either ignored or mocked by most of Bridgeford's inhabitants, is preparing for an important contest, and to win it they need new members, and a whole new sound. Enlisting (some may say drafting) singers, who include a mother suffering from empty-nest syndrome, a middle-aged man who has just lost his job and his family, and a nineteen-year-old waitress who dreams of reality-TV stardom, the choir regulars must find--and make--harmony with neighbors they've been happy not to know for years. Can they all learn to work together, save the choir, and maybe even save their town in the process?
All Together Now is a poignant and charming novel about community, family, falling in love--and the big rewards of making a small change.
Cocktails and Books received this book for free from Galley Sites, NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect our opinion of the book or the content of our review.
All Together Now is an adorable book! Hornsby mangaged to take a diverse group of– should I say misfits?—and somehow transform them into a cohesive, joyous “family” of sorts . I enjoyed this story for many reasons: the music references, the Britishness of it all, but most of all the characters are what did it for me. Like any good book, in my opinion anyway, good character development is what draws readers in.
All Together Now takes place in Bridgeford. Its citizens seem to be lacking civic pride. They are defintely not impressed with the Bridgeford Community Choir. Granted, the choir lacks the diversity that Bridgeford has and the diehards of the group are reluctanct to change with the times so it’s understandable that they are finding it tough to recruit new members. Thank God for Annie. Ever reliable and dependable…predictable, motherly, empty-nester Annie….
Annie manages to recruit, sometimes forcibly, some new choir members that turn out to be stars. There are so many memorable and dynamic characters in the book, but to me, Annie, Bennet and Tracey stood out the most. While I initially did not care for Tracey, by book’s end I loved her and what she did for the choir and the town. Annie was a bit annoying—do you know those martyr-types that always “do” for others and seem to have no sense of themselves?—but once she finds her own identity outside of her children she is admirable. I loved Bennet from the start. His nerdy, cluelessness was as endearing as his ballsy, take-charge attitude by the story’s conclusion.
I loved it. Read it. This is a very uplifting story—and you will be singing along in no time.
