Story for the Week
Hello…my name is Nancy. I am a Gen X mom, and I have bad texting manners…or so I’m told. 😉
As a Gen Xer, I obviously grew up when texting didn’t exist. I learned along with everyone else when cell phones and texting came into existence. I suffered through multi-tap texting, where you might have to press a key three times to enter the letter you wanted. Now I just struggle with autocorrect failure along with everyone else…when “lol” ends up being “loo” because autocorrect decides at random not to work. Or when it autocorrects when I don’t want it to and it takes me three times to send the correct word because it keeps autocorrecting, and I’m texting too fast.
I’ve also typically been a stickler for correctness in writing. I studied journalism in college with minors in English and psychology. While I am willing to be “less correct” for casual writing like this, I tend to use complete and correct sentences when I write. It took me a very long time to break the habit of correctly capitalizing and punctuating in instant messaging.
With the help of autocorrect, however, a double space in a text message will automatically add a period and capitalize the next sentence. Proper names get capitalized, spelling errors get corrected. But I have a habit that probably most Gen Xers have, maybe even most of the Millennials. I double space at the end of a text message if it’s a complete sentence, which automatically puts a period at the end of the message.
I never thought anything of it. It’s the end of a sentence, after all. Apparently, though, a period at the end of a text message is rude. At least that’s what my daughter told me when her friend Jakub thought I was mad at him. Why did he think I was mad at him? Because I sent him a text and put a period at the end. 🙄
So we got to talking about other things that we older people do in text messages that are perceived as rude or mean to the younger generations. I had heard that saying “ok” is rude, but Jakub and Corinne said they don’t think so. Jakub said that he thinks “okay” is too formal. However, when I looked at our group chat, both of them almost always use “okay.” And where “ok” is fine, apparently “k” means you’re mad. 🤷🏻♀️
Also according to Jakub and Corinne, using single letters to replace an entire word (“r” instead of “are” and “u” instead of “you”) makes a texter look lazy. Using “lmao” in lowercase gives the same vibe as “lol,” but “LMAO” means something is genuinely funny. And when someone says “haha,” it’s sarcastic and means they don’t really find what they read funny at all.
I’m sure there are other rules that I get wrong, but I feel like the rules aren’t really rules. There’s no rhyme or reason, so I’m just going to continue to text the way I text, and Jakub and Corinne will just have to figure out when I’m really mad and when I’m not. Jakub was just really excited to be the subject of a blog post. 🤭
What prompted Jakub’s feature appearance? I finished a book recently with a secondary character I loved, and there was a conversation about cracking the texting code of the younger generation. I immediately made a note to use it for a blog post: “Jakub thinking I was mad because I put a period at the end of a text.”
“Annie says, ‘You mad at someone?’
“‘No, why?’
“‘The thumbs up emoji. You know it’s considered rude?’
“Keller chuckles. ‘I didn’t know that. Your generation—I’m never going to break the code.’”
Same, girl….same.
Book Review
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
5 Stars for Parents Weekend by Alex Finlay
320 pages
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Publication Date: May 6, 2025
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and Minotaur Books.
Publisher’s Description
In the glow of their children’s exciting first year of college at a small private school in Northern California, five families plan on a night of dinner and cocktails for the opening festivities of Parents Weekend. As the parents stay out way past their bedtimes, their kids―five residents of Campisi Hall―never show up at dinner.
At first, everyone thinks that they’re just being college students, irresponsibly forgetting about the gathering or skipping out to go to a party. But as the hours click by and another night falls with not so much as a text from the students, panic ensues. Soon, the campus police call in reinforcements. Search parties are formed. Reporters swarm the small enclave. Rumors swirl and questions arise.
Libby, Blane, Mark, Felix, and Stella―The Five, as the podcasters, bloggers, and TikTok sleuths call them―come from five very different families. What led them out on that fateful night? Could it be the sins of their mothers and fathers come to cause them peril or a threat to the friend group from within?
************
Main Characters:
- The Kellers – Sarah is a special agent with the FBI who recently requested a temporary transfer to California so she and her husband Bob can help her father-in-law, the two have nine-year-old twins
- The Roosevelts – son Blane is one of The Five, Cynthia works for the State Department based out of DC, Hank is a novelist and shows up unannounced at Parents Weekend even though he shouldn’t be there, Cynthia and Hank divorced after Blane was abducted for four days when he was 10 years old
- The Maldonados – daughter Stella is one of The Five, David has been a plastic surgeon for 20 years, Nina practices yoga and healthy living and disapproves of her husband’s chosen profession, David recently broke off an affair with an anesthesiologist
- The Goffmans – son Felix is one of The Five and a scholarship student at SCU, Alice is a single mom who works in the Dean’s office at SCU
- The Akanas – daughter Libby is one of The Five, son Timmy died from childhood cancer, Amy met Ken in law school but stopped working when Timmy fell ill, Ken is an LA Superior Court judge with the nickname No Drama Akana, recently gained notoriety when he presided over a case in which an A-list movie star was charged with beating up his startlet girlfriend
- The Wongs – son Mark is one of The Five, Mark’s father served 10 years in prison for multiple sexual assaults, Mark and his father are estranged
- The Belovs – 21-year-old daughter Natasha went missing the week before Parents Weekend and was found drowned in a cave
When I finished Parents Weekend, I immediately purchased Every Last Fear and Night Shift. This is absolutely a solid stand-alone, and the story references a high-profile case that Special Agent Sarah Keller worked. The author used her character in those novels as well, so I really want to read them. Keller makes for a great main character—dedicated and hard-working Federal agent, devoted wife and mother, smart, sympathetic. So now I want to know her entire backstory.
This story alternates perspectives between all of the families, providing each of their individual histories as all of them converge onto the Santa Cruz University campus for Parents Weekend. As the parents arrive at a dinner, some of them shortly after seeing their sons and daughters, the students vanish. None of them show up at the dinner.
We are led through the rest of the weekend, which ends up being an investigation rather than parents visiting a college campus. Multiple suspects pop up, each with a different possible motive, none of whom have a motive to kidnap all five students. Woven into the timeline is the history on the students and their parents…what happened to them before the students started attending SCU.
This author does an amazing job pacing his stories. He shifts between multiple points of view with chapters long enough to tell the story and short enough to make me want to keep reading to get back to a previous POV. When I read my first book by Alex Finlay, What Have We Done (You Really Do Get Only One First Impression), I wished I could have read the book again without knowing how everything played out. I felt the same here. While I figured out who did it a bit before the reveal, I certainly didn’t know the why until close to the end.
And when a thriller can make me smile at the epilogue and realize I would love to read a book based on a quirky secondary character I couldn’t help but like…well that’s a bonus. Another great read by Finlay. You won’t want to miss this one.
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