The Responsible Party by Claire Carusillo
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
Publication Date: August 11, 2026
Format: Hardcover - 336 pages
Audiobook - 11 Hours 32 Minutes
Kindle - 329 pages
Nook - 272 pages
ISBN (Hardcover): 978-1250408631
ASIN (Audiobook): B0FRB3RHT9
ASIN (Kindle): B0FMSCKCXP
BNID (Nook): 978-1250408648
Genre: Historical Fiction
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Disclaimer: I received an ARC from NetGalley and a paperback ARC from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.
Book Description:
Geek Love meets Sam Lipsyte in this rollicking, hilarious debut novel about a family of unforgettable women obsessed with securing their legacy
Claire grew up with the legend of the Unsinkable Mounsey Women. Fanny, her great-great grandmother, made headlines in 1915 for washing ashore in England nearly a year after her ship sank. Fanny’s daughter Sarah went to collect her mother on a British ocean liner named the Lusitania—whose sinking she, too, survived. Their improbable survivals led them to success on the vaudeville circuit and as Midwestern icons. But Claire never knew the full story—until now.
Listless, jobless and recently canceled for extolling dangerous skincare advice online that sent a reader to the hospital, Claire is surprised when a knock at the door turns out to be the police, looking for answers about a 1970s cold case they suspect her mother, Kath, may know something about. As the cops zero in, Claire demands answers from her mother.
Kath’s comically long response, which blossoms into the story of the Mounseys and their descendants writ large, moves from a Liverpudlian poorhouse at the onset of World War I to a Lake Michigan lighthouse in 1971 (when “sex was freer and McDonald’s fried their potatoes with beef tallow”) to present-day Chicagoland, and along the way, offers Claire a richer understanding of everything she shares with the complicated, resilient women she descends from.
Replete with inappropriately old boyfriends, dubious medical professionals, and more than a few boats, The Responsible Party is the story of several women, in several different timelines, trying to stay afloat.
My Book Review:
In The Responsible Party by author Claire Carusillo, the reader follows the story of a family of women who keep their legacy of surviving events alive throughout the decades.
I really have a hard time figuring out what I want to say about this book. What could have been a really intriguing story was anything but that because of the way the story meanders and jumps all over the place, it was also supposed to be humorous, but I found that the author's dry humor wasn't all that funny.
Told in the first-person narrative, the reader follows along as Claire narrates the story of her family of unforgettable women who are obsessed with securing their legacy as the Unsinkable Mounsey Women, even if they have to commit murder to do so.
The story is broken down in the past / present timeline in five parts: their legacy (great-great-grandmother Fanny and great-aunt Sarah) and her inheritance (Claire and her mother Kath). Fanny and Sarah's story is that both survive being on ships that sink and later become The Unsinkable Mounsey Women, vaudeville entertainers throughout the Midwest. Through Kath's telling of her childhood living with Fanny and Sarah, Claire describes how the legacy to maintain the family legacy leads to a murder that resurfaces many years later when a detective and genetic genealogist come to their home with questions about a body that was recovered with DNA from their family.
The story is just too weird to enjoy, and as I continued to read it, I got to the point that I was saying, "WTF am I reading?" What was supposed to be a historical novel, was filled with historical events that weren't even relevant to the story, and the only redeeming portion of the story was that the murder was somewhat interesting. Unfortunately, the story meandered so much that I even considered DNFing it, but I always give a story the chance to hopefully turn into something entertaining much to my chagrin.
Rating: 3 Stars 
About The Author
Claire Carusillo is a writer from Illinois. She now lives in Midway, Utah, where she co-owns Storyboard, a bookstore, skate shop, and coffee bar. She has an MFA in fiction from Columbia University, where she was a teaching fellow. Her writing has appeared all over the internet, including in Gawker, New York, Elle, and her newsletter, That Wet Look. The Responsible Party is her debut novel that was published in August 2026.
