Meet the Newmans by Jennifer Niven Published by Pan Macmillan on 6 January 2026
Genres: Historical Fiction
Format: eBook
Source: NetGalley
Goodreads
For two decades, Del and Dinah Newman and their sons, Guy and Shep, have ruled television as America’s Favorite Family. Millions of viewers tune in every week to watch them play flawless, black-and-white versions of themselves. But now it’s 1964, and the Newmans’ idealized apple-pie perfection suddenly feels woefully out of touch. Ratings are in free fall, as are the Newmans themselves. Del is keeping an explosive secret from his wife, and Dinah is slowly going numb—literally. Steady, stable Guy is hiding the truth about his love life, and the charmed luck of rock ‘n roll idol Shep may have finally run out.
When Del—the creative motor behind the show—is in a mysterious car accident, Dinah decides to take matters into her own hands. She hires Juliet Dunne, an outspoken, impassioned young reporter, to help her write the final episode. But Dinah and Juliet have wildly different perspectives about what it means to be a woman, and a family, in 1964. Can the Newmans hold it together to change television history? Or will they be canceled before they ever have the chance?
I was incredibly excited for Meet the Newmans due to my love for Rich People Drama and my new found appreciation of reality TV. Unfortunately, this book was not as dramatic as I was hoping, and at the same time it wasn’t in-depth enough to balance that out.
I felt Meet the Newmans was very slow paced – more slow than I expected – and it became very repetitive in the middle of the book, causing it to drag. The women were going over the scripts and their issues again and again, repeating the same problems and having the same conversations and the same falling outs. I found myself just wanting to get to the end in the hope that there would be an explosive finish. But there wasn’t.
I didn’t really feel much for the Newmans, or any of the side characters. I felt like the characters were all very surface level. They each had their Thing, and that was that. I felt similarly about the issues and the feminism that the author was addressing here. It all felt very basic, as though the author was trying to cover every single issue without diving more deeply into any of them.
I’m really disappointed that this book was so mid, as I was so ready to love it!
Leave a Reply