The breakaway : a novel

Thirty-three-year-old Abby Stern has made it to a happy place. True, she still has gig jobs instead of a career, and the apartment where she's lived since college still looks like she's just moved in. But she's got good friends, her bike, and her bicycling club. She's at peace with her plus-size body--at least, most of the time--and she's on track to marry Mark Medoff, her childhood summer sweetheart, a man she met at the weight-loss camp that her perpetually dieting mother forced her to attend. Fifteen years after her final summer at Camp Golden Hills, when Abby reconnects with a half-his-size Mark, it feels like the happy ending she's always wanted. Yet Abby can't escape the feeling that something isn't right...or the memories of one thrilling night she spent with a man named Sebastian two years previously. When Abby gets a last-minute invitation to lead a cycling trip from NYC to Niagara Falls, she's happy to have time away from Mark, a chance to reflect and make up her mind. But things get complicated fast. First, Abby spots a familiar face in the group--Sebastian, the one-night stand she thought she'd never see again. Sebastian is a serial dater who lives a hundred miles away. In spite of their undeniable chemistry, Abby is determined to keep her distance. Then there's a surprise last-minute addition to the trip: her mother, Eileen, the woman Abby blames for a lifetime of body shaming and insecurities she's still trying to undo. Over two weeks and more than seven hundred miles, strangers become friends, hidden truths come to light, a teenage girl with a secret unites the riders in unexpected ways...and Abby is forced to reconsider everything she believes about herself, her mother, and the nature of love

Book - 2023

FIC Weine

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Subject

Overweight women > Fiction.
Man-woman relationships > Fiction.
Bicycle touring > New York (State) > Fiction.
Mothers and daughters > Fiction.
Self-realization in women > Fiction.
Choice (Psychology) > Fiction.
Friendship > Fiction.

Genre

Domestic fiction.

ISBN: 9781668033425
Physical Description 387 pages : map ; 24 cm
Edition First Atria Books hardcover edition.
Publisher [Place of publication not identified] : [publisher not identified], 2023.

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Includes reader's guide.

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Syndetic Solutions - Excerpt for ISBN Number 9781668033425

The Breakaway : A Novel

by Weiner, Jennifer

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Excerpt

The Breakaway : A Novel

1. AbbyAbby 1996 Are you ready?" She wasn't. But her sister and her brother had both learned how to ride their bikes before they turned six, and Abby was a few weeks away from her seventh birthday, and her dad had already spent twenty minutes taking the training wheels off her bike. She knew she had to try. "Okay, I'm going to hold the seat until you get your balance, and then I'm going to let go." She nodded without turning from her perch on her bike's seat. If she took her feet off the pedals she'd be able to touch the ground with her tiptoes. Still, she felt like she was in outer space, that the ground was a million miles away; that if she lost her balance she'd go plummeting to her doom. "Okay. Here we go." She felt her daddy's hand on the back of her seat, steadying the bike. She made herself push with her right foot. The pedals turned. The wheels spun. "Here you go! Pedal, pedal, pedal! You've got it!" her daddy shouted. And then he wasn't there. It was just Abby, alone on her bike... and she wasn't falling. She clutched the handlebars, not paying any attention to where the bike was headed, and she pedaled, pedaled, keeping her balance, and the wind was cool on her cheeks, brushing back her hair, and she was picking up speed, only wobbling a little, and she wasn't falling . She was riding. It felt like floating. It felt like flying. It felt like she was far away from everything that hurt her. The icy silences that stretched between her parents. The way her mom would always put a plate of cut-up carrots or bell peppers by her plate, and no one else's, at dinnertime. How Dylan McVay at school had started calling her Flabby Abby, and now all the boys called her that. "Abby! Stop! Turn around! Don't go on the busy street!" Her daddy was yelling, chasing after her, his voice getting farther away with every rotation of the pedals. And Abby wasn't falling. She was riding, on a bike that could take her anywhere. She was free. Excerpted from The Breakaway: A Novel by Jennifer Weiner All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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