Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

Title: Where’d You Go, Bernadette

Author: Maria Semple

Publisher: Back Bay Books 2012

Genre: Fiction

Pages: 330

Rating:  5/5 stars

Reading Challenges: TBR Reduction; Mount TBR

Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she’s a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she’s a disgrace; to design mavens, she’s a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom.

Then Bernadette disappears. It began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette’s intensifying allergy to Seattle—and people in general—has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands. A trip to the end of the earth is problematic.

To find her mother, Bee compiles email messages, official documents, secret correspondence—creating a compulsively readable and touching novel about misplaced genius and a mother and daughter’s role in an absurd world.

This book was a delight. I laughed, I cried, it had everything. I was skeptical reading the first 25 pages, but quickly got hooked with the amazing characters. Bee is such a great character and Bernadette is even better. I loved learning bits and pieces about them through the emails, journal entries, and notes from other character. The story structure really held my attention. And of course, I wanted to find out what happened to Bernadette. A great quick read.