Review: Parents Weekend by Alex Finlay

Parents Weekend

by Alex Finlay

Release Date: May 6, 2025

2025 Minotaur Books

Ebook & Audiobook Editions; 312 Pages

ISBN: 978-1250360724

ASIN: B0DBVV6PMG

Audiobook: B0DFQLZKMF

Genre: Fiction / Suspense

Source: Review copy from publisher

 

2 / 5 Stars

 

Summary

In the glow of their children’s exciting first year of college at a small private school in Northern California, five families plan on a night of dinner and cocktails for the opening festivities of Parents Weekend. As the parents stay out way past their bedtimes, their kids—five residents of Campisi Hall—never show up at dinner.

At first, everyone thinks that they’re just being college students, irresponsibly forgetting about the gathering or skipping out to go to a party. But as the hours click by and another night falls with not so much as a text from the students, panic ensues. What led them out on that fateful night? Could it be the sins of their mothers and fathers come to cause them peril or a threat to the friend group from within?

 

My Thoughts

Parents Weekend had a very interesting premise, and as a mom to two children who graduated from university last year, this book caught my attention as there are so many things that can go wrong on campus and it's really hard not to worry about your kids when they are away at school.  But while the premise was interesting, the delivery left something to be desired, and if I had not actually been listening to this book, I would have DNF it for sure.

 

First of all, I could not name one character from this story if my life depended on it without reading the blurb and it's only been about a month since I read it. It's not really the amount of characters that was the issue, it was the amount of POV that was the issue as it meant that none of the characters got any real development as the story just jumped around from chapter to chapter and I stopped caring about what happened to who about halfway through the book.  If the book had just focused on maybe two of them, like one parent and one child, that would have made a lot more sense. 

 

Sadly, the plot itself didn't hold up to the interesting premise. Because while we know that college students have secrets, and the author was trying to portray that concept through this book, secrets that the parents know nothing about, it just didn't work. The plot had so many plot holes that I just stopped paying attention to what was really going on trying to get through it as fast as possible.  While this could have been a great exploration of secrets and the consequences of those secrets, or how kids grow up and develop lives separately from their parents, instead it was a convoluted mess.  Honestly, the parents were worse than the kids. And while I would normally find all of that fascinating, the approach in the book left me feeling distant from any of the characters, and the lack of any thematic development left me wanting to just roll my eyes at the antics of everyone involved. 

 

Verdict

Parents Weekend was just not one of my favourite books by this author. I think fewer POV would have been a lot better for this type of story and would have improved the character development.  I also think it would have helped keep up the tension that is needed for such a book. The premise of the book is great, and I did enjoy the author's thoughts and comments at the end, but overall, a lack of depth with regards to the plot and issues with character development left me disappointed. Not one of his better ones, for sure.