The Last Romantics

It begins in a big yellow house, with a funeral, an iron poker, and a brief variation forever known as the Pause: a free and feral summer in a middle-class Connecticut town. Caught between the predictable life they once led and an uncertain future that stretches before them, the Skinner siblings—fierce Renee, sensitive Caroline, golden-boy Joe, and watchful Fiona—emerge from the Pause staunchly loyal and deeply connected. Two decades later, the siblings find themselves again confronted with a family crisis that tests the strength of this bond and forces them to question the life choices they’ve made and to ask what, exactly, they will do for love.
A sweeping yet intimate epic about one American family, The Last Romantics is a beautiful meditation on the power of stories and an unforgettable exploration of the ties that bind us together, the responsibilities we embrace and the duties we resent, and how we can lose—and sometimes rescue—the ones we love.

“Tara Conklin is a generous writer who deftly brings us into the world of this fictional family, an engrossing and vivid place where I was happy to stay. The Last Romantics is a richly observed novel, both ambitious and welcoming.” — Meg Wolitzer
“It is the strength and fragility of the siblings’ bond, the evolving nature of love that is at the core of Conklin’s novel....Gracefully rendered, The Last Romantics focuses on the familiar theme of family with great originality.” — Washington Post
“Pick up The Last Romantics when you want to be swept into a fictional family....As the narrative traces [the Skinner siblings’] converging and diverging paths over the course of their lives—and promises made, kept, broken, changed—you’ll fall deeper and deeper in.” — Goop
“Conklin examines her characters’ lives with generosity and an unflinching eye for the complexities of love and family.... Fans of Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections will find similar pleasures in the intelligence and empathy on display here.” — USA Today (four stars)
“A modern epic...in the vein of Commonwealth, THE LAST ROMANTICS is a sweeping look at what binds families together.” — Glamour
“Perfectly paced, affecting fiction.” — Booklist
“An intimate, soul-searing examination of a modern family and the ties that bind, for better or worse.” — Stefanie Hargreaves, Shelf Awareness Galley Love of the Week
“Intensely moving.” — Shanina Piyarali, Shelf Awareness
“An absorbing and redemptive novel of grace, craft and heroic characters.” — Berkshire Eagle
“A triumph of storytelling, an ambitious examination of the failures of love and how we, against all odds, find a way to survive.... A complex, resonant work that will reshape your understanding of family.”
— Kevin Wilson, author of The Family Fang
“All of the luxuriously spun characters in The Last Romantics, entwined via that impossible web we call family, unfold over their many years with the perfect balance of familiarity and wonder that makes turning their pages such a pleasure.” — Laurie Frankel, New York Times bestselling author of This Is How It Always Is
“There’s so much love and loss in this book that I read it with a box of tissues, laughing with astonishment through the tears. The kind of book you lose yourself in.” — Lisa Gabriele, author of The Winters
"A haunting story of familial love, loyalty and loss that will break your heart and then put the pieces back together again in better working condition. An impossible book to put down." — Jamie Ford