THE JETSETTERS

When seventy-year-old Charlotte Perkins submits a sexy essay to the “Become a Jetsetter” contest, she dreams of reuniting her estranged children: Lee, an almost-famous actress; Cord, a handsome Manhattan venture capitalist who can’t seem to find a partner; and Regan, a harried mother who took it all wrong when Charlotte bought her a Weight Watchers gift certificate for her birthday. Charlotte yearns for the years when her children were young, when she was a single mother who meant everything to them.

When she wins the contest, the family packs their baggage—both literal and figurative—and spends ten days traveling from sun-drenched Athens through glorious Rome to tapas-laden Barcelona on an over-the-top cruise ship, the Splendido Marveloso. As lovers new and old join the adventure, long-buried secrets are revealed and old wounds are reopened, forcing the Perkins family to confront the forces that drove them apart and the defining choices of their lives.

Can four lost adults find the peace they’ve been seeking by reconciling their childhood aches and coming back together? In the vein of The Nest and The Vacationers, The Jetsetters is a delicious and intelligent novel about the courage it takes to reveal our true selves, the pleasures and perils of family, and how we navigate the seas of adulthood.

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REVIEWS

“Ward nails how family expeditions are ruined and saved, over and over again, by fleeting moments of connection and the consensus to survive without killing one another.”
— The New York Times Book Review

“Dysfunctional family goes away together on a Mediterranean cruise: What's not to love? This novel fell squarely in my wheelhouse and I was delighted anew in every port. The Jetsetters is fun, sexy and engrossing.”
— Elin Hildebrand, #1 New York Times bestselling author author of Summer of '69

“The funniest novel that ever broke your heart.”
— Andrew Sean Greer, bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less

“Ward crystallizes the amorphous nature of relationships in a way that gets you laughing and then bawling, then laughing again, then bawling, and ultimately feeling deliriously alive. . . . Emotional, authentic, badass, brilliant.”
— Jardine Libaire, author of White Fur

“Witty, insightful, and full of heart, The Jetsetters is the story of a family on a cruise, and on the brink, in some of the most idyllic locations on earth. . . . The perfect novel to read in a pool lounger as you sip a colorful cocktail.”
— Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Orphan Train

“No one, and no relationship, is perfect in this story, which embraces the messiness of love and life. Ward has created a complex story that explores the tragedies and long-term effects of withheld love, verbal abuse, alcoholism, and depression on individuals and their families, set against the backdrop of a splendidly gaudy, over-the-top Mediterranean cruise ship and its historic ports of call.”
— Kirkus Reviews

“Each character’s dysfunctions run deep, and each plot twist threatens to sink their sanity, resulting in a funny, moving tale of the complications of familial love.”
—Booklist