One long-kept secret. One lost love. One chance to start over. When recently widowed Maggie Flynn returns home to Wyndham Beach for her fortieth high school reunion, she picks up right where she left off with her old friends. But seeing Brett Crawford again stirs other emotions. Once, they were the town’s golden couple destined for one another. He shared Maggie’s dreams—and eventually, a shattering secret that drove them apart. Deciding to resettle in Wyndham Beach with her daughters, Maggie will finally have to confront—and embrace—the past in ways she never thought possible. Read An Invincible Summer by Mariah Stewart. It’s either the best part of a teenager’s life or the absolute worst. Sure, you have the All American Boy or the Homecoming Queen who peaked senior year and look back fondly on the glory days. But the rest of us are more than happy to let bygones be bygones. However, one American tradition forces thousands of high school alumni, with fond or awful memories, to descend upon the sweaty gymnasium that hasn’t had an upgrade since the ’90s to “catch up”: the high school reunion. I confess that one of my favorite sitcom tropes is when a character must attend their high school reunion. There’s something about watching fully grown adults regress to their teenage selves. Some characters backslide into old roles, others live out their revenge fantasy of letting peers envy their success, and the select few who settle old scores.
Novels About High School Reunions
I am equally enthralled by books that use high school reunions as a plot device to explore past trauma, unrequited love, or the fallibility of memories. Teenagers are notorious for believing that they know everything. It’s really the passage of time that allows them to gain perspective. A high school reunion is the perfect setting for characters to process their teenage years. While researching books about high school reunions, I was surprised to see that most books generally fell in two camps: chick lit or thriller. I believe this goes back to my earlier point about high school being the best of times or the worst of times. Meeting with people from our pasts can really bring out the best or worst in us.
Diversity in Novels About High School Reunions
Something else that made me pause was the glaring lack of BIPOC writers who’ve published books about high school reunions. I imagine there are BIPOC writers who have included high school reunions in their stories, but as far as my hours of research goes, not many have written books with high school reunions as the main setting or plot devices (or have books that are still in print). I found one thriller by a Black writer and one anthropological study by a Japanese anthropologist. It’s telling that one book has a rather dark theme while the other is an objective academic study. I can make a few educated guesses about the lack of BIPOC writers in this space. The first and most obvious is that BIPOC writers are only now being given fair chances by publishers to write books in an array of genres and settings, so perhaps we’ll see more books about high school reunions by BIPOC writers in the future. In addition, many schools in America are still segregated due in part to racist practices such as redlining and white flight, which pulls funding from schools that serve communities of color. I would conjecture that some of these schools (not all) simply don’t have the resources to plan high school reunions (which is also the case for schools throughout America with limited funding). Again, these are my educated guesses. We can only hope for more diverse voices in the future.
Darker and More Poignant Books About High School Reunions
As I mentioned, high school reunions seem to be the ideal setting for thrillers and/or horror stories. Trauma is a trigger point for this genre and high school is unfortunately a fertile ground for it. On the flip side, there are literary works that use high school reunions as poignant plot devices that raise larger questions about the American Dream and even American idealism.
Humorous and Romantic Books About High School Reunions
These last few books take a lighter and more hopeful look at high school reunions, with authors using the setting to trigger growth and healing in characters.
