Reunion

In the appealing latest from Juska (after If We Had Known), three friends attend their 25th college reunion in Maine during the Covid-19 pandemic. Hope Richardson, now an overwhelmed stay-at-home mom with two children and a husband who is “deeply around, yet deeply absent,” can’t wait for a weekend away from her Philadelphia suburb. Her friends Adam Dalton and Polly Gesauldi are less convinced. Adam, late to marriage and now a father to five-year-old twin boys in New Hampshire, is concerned about leaving them with his wife, whose anxiety has worsened during quarantine. Single mother Polly is a cash-strapped and “exploited” adjunct professor in New York City and only agrees to attend the reunion when her 18-year-old son, Jacob, who’s had trouble dealing with the social isolation of lockdown, asks to tag along to spend the weekend with a friend whose family has a summer house near the campus. Hijinks ensue as the Natty Light flows freely, and long-held secrets work their way to the surface. When Jacob goes missing from his friend’s house and leaves behind a cryptic Instagram message, Hope, Adam, and Polly band together to find him. While some of the plot turns are predictable, the characters are well drawn, and Juska does an especially good job of portraying how her cast navigates a new normal. It’s a diverting twist on the Big Chill formula. Agent: Katherine Fausset, Curtis Brown Ltd. (May)