The Breakaway, Jennifer Weiner
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The Breakaway

Bestseller

Unabridged: 13 hr 30 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/29/2023


Synopsis

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Weiner comes a warmhearted and empowering new novel about love, family, friendship, secrets, and a life-changing journey.

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 in Philadelphia. 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 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.

Author Bio

American author, Jennifer Weiner, was born in 1970 into a Jewish family in DeRidder, Louisiana. Her father was an army physician stationed there. In 1971, her family moved to Simsbury, Connecticut where Jennifer grew up, but at the age of 16, Jennifer's father abandoned his family. The divorce was very traumatic to Jennifer and her siblings. Her father died of a crack cocaine overdose in 2008. Then, her mother came out as a lesbian when she was 55 years of age.

After graduating high school, where Jennifer was one of only nine Jewish students in a class of 400, she attended Princeton University at the young age of 17. She graduated summa cum laude with an A.B. in English. She had written her thesis entitled, "Never Far From Mother- On the Uses of Essentialism in Novels and Films". Her thesis served her well in setting up her credentials for her current career. She studied under several notable, successful authors and playwrights. Her first published story appeared in Seventeen magazine, entitled, "Tour of Duty".

Jennifer Weiner's books have been on the NYT best sellers list for five years. She has sold 11 million copies in 36 countries. She has written op-eds for the Philadelphia Inquirer and the New York Times. Jennifer had two very popular op-eds for the Sunday Review.......Mean Girls in the Retirement Home and Another Thing to Hate About Ourselves. They have been reprinted in newspapers across the world. So used her platform to encourage women to improve their self-esteem and body images.

Jennifer's first novel, Good in Bed, was published in 2001, followed by, In Her Shoes, in 2002. The latter was made into a movie starring Cameron Diaz, Toni Collette, and Shirley MacLaine.

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