7 novels set during class reunions

The Hunting Party: A Novel

by Lucy Foley

Sometimes reunions bring out the worst in us. A group of nine college friends reunite annually to celebrate the New Year. But when a blizzard strikes while they’re stuck in an isolated lodge in Scotland, old resentments and toxic patterns emerge. By New Year’s Day, one of them is dead and one of them did it. Which of the friends is a killer? A great choice for anyone who enjoys locked-room mysteries.

The Most Likely Club

by Elyssa Friedland

For anyone in the mood for a dose of 1990s nostalgia. When Melissa, Priya, Tara, and Suki graduated in 1997, they thought they would conquer the world. Twenty-five years later, their high school reunion approaches and none of them are where they thought they’d be. They make a pact to go after their old dreams, one way or another. A fun examination of friendship, the transition to adulthood, and the meaning of yearbook superlatives.

Friends Without Benefits

by Penny Reid

This smart contemporary romance series follows a group of seven friends in Chicago, whose relationships blossomed thanks to Knit Night. In this installment, pediatric doctor Elizabeth crosses paths with her childhood nemesis Nico when he brings his niece to Elizabeth’s hospital to enroll in a cystic fibrosis study. She is not pleased to see him, to say the least. It takes being forced to return to their hometown for a high school reunion, time, and Nico’s charm and persistence for her to start seeing him in a different light. An absolute delight to read. (You can choose your own adventure when it comes to the sex scenes: there are closed door and open door versions.)

The Last Time I Saw You

by Elizabeth Berg

A fortieth high school reunion provides the opportunity for second chances, reconciliation, escape, and to finally say what was long left unsaid. Berg focuses on Dorothy, Mary Alice, Lester, Candy, and Pete as they reconnect with their past and make sense of where their lives went right or wrong. The reunion means something different for each of the attendees but one thing is for sure: their lives will never be the same again.

Your Perfect Life: A Novel

by Lisa Steinke, Liz Fenton

Freaky Friday meets high school reunion in this contemporary novel about childhood best friends Casey and Rachel. Casey hosts a celebrity gossip TV show, while Rachel is a stay-at-home mom. While arguing at their twentieth high school reunion, they make up by taking shots…and wake up in each other’s bodies the next morning. Switching lives leads to startling clarity about their past dreams and current reality, as well as their friendship.

American Pastoral

by Philip Roth

A forty-fifth high school reunion is the inciting incident for what is widely regarded as Roth’s masterpiece. Nathan Zuckerman runs into Jerry Levov. Nathan looked up to Jerry’s brother and star athlete Seymour aka Swede. Swede was the embodiment of the American Dream until his luck deserts him and his daughter Merry engages in an act of political terrorism and goes underground.

Gaudy Night: A Lord Peter Wimsey Mystery with Harriet Vane

by Dorothy L. Sayers

Part campus novel, part intricately-plotted mystery: this is Sayers’ tenth Lord Peter novel, the first told from the perspective of Harriet Vane, and undoubtedly one of her finest. (They needn’t be read in order.) When Ms. Vane returns to Oxford for her college’s reunion (the “gaudy” of the title), the festive mood on campus is threatened by an alarming outbreak of murderous threats. Sayers makes this much more than a crime novel, though it's a good one—Harriet grapples with questions of love and friendship, life and work, gender and class, and the writing life.

7 novels set during class reunions

The Hunting Party: A Novel

The Most Likely Club

Friends Without Benefits

The Last Time I Saw You

Your Perfect Life: A Novel

American Pastoral

Gaudy Night: A Lord Peter Wimsey Mystery with Harriet Vane

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