In her sophomore novel, Angelica Baker delivers a searing portrait of six friends approaching their thirties, navigating the treacherous waters of long-term friendship as they confront the uncomfortable truth that they might have outgrown each other. When We Grow Up is an incisive exploration of what happens when nostalgia collides with reality, when the people who defined our past no longer fit into our present, and when the desire to be understood battles with the fear of being truly seen.
Set primarily during a weeklong vacation in Hawai’i, the novel follows Clare—a woman whose seemingly perfect life (marriage to a successful husband, a book deal) masks a growing disillusionment with both herself and the world around her. As she reunites with her high school friends—Renzo, Kyle, Mac, Jessie, and Liam—a false missile alert on their second day becomes a catalyst for examining not just their relationships with each other, but their places in a world that feels increasingly precarious.
The Complex Web of Character Dynamics
Baker excels at creating characters who feel startlingly real in their flaws and contradictions. At the center is Clare, whose perspective dominates the narrative. Restless and self-critical, Clare oscillates between judging her friends harshly and desperately craving their approval. Her growing attraction to Liam (which evolves into an affair) serves as both escape and self-sabotage, reflecting her larger pattern of creating situations that force her to confront her own dissatisfaction.
The supporting cast is equally well-drawn:
Renzo: The magnetic, gay friend who organized the trip. Sharp-tongued and manipulative, yet surprisingly vulnerable when his defenses crack.
Kyle: The wealthy peacemaker whose family owns the vacation home, perpetually avoiding conflict.
Mac: The Black friend who has perhaps most outgrown the group, carrying the weight of their past casual racism.
Jessie: The insecure former object of both Renzo and Mac’s affections, defensive about her conservative boyfriend Geoff.
Liam: The semi-famous son of a celebrity, whose reappearance in Clare’s life triggers both nostalgia and destructive impulses.
What makes these relationships feel so authentic is Baker’s refusal to simplify them. Each character serves as both antagonist and ally to the others at different moments, shifting alliances and grudges that span decades creating a complex social ecosystem. When Mac finally confronts Clare about her blindspots regarding race during their hike, it’s both a reckoning long overdue and a moment of genuine connection.
Masterful Structure and Pacing
Baker employs a structure that weaves present-day scenes with flashbacks to various points in the characters’ shared history—high school encounters, college visits, even Clare’s wedding. This technique works remarkably well, providing crucial context for present tensions while highlighting how these friendships have evolved (or failed to evolve) over time.
Particularly effective is the juxtaposition of a flashback to teenage Renzo showing up at Kyle’s doorstep after his parents discover he’s gay with the present-day dinner scene where Renzo finally erupts, calling out everyone’s privilege and hypocrisy. These moments reveal how foundational traumas continue to shape group dynamics decades later.
The pacing builds with precision toward the explosive dinner scene in the final third of the book—a masterclass in tension that crests when Renzo publicly exposes Clare’s affair with Liam. However, Baker wisely doesn’t end there, allowing the aftermath to unfold with equal attention and care.
Thematic Richness
When We Grow Up explores several interconnected themes with impressive nuance:
The Impossibility of Ethical Certainty
Throughout the novel, Clare grapples with what it means to be “good” in a world where every action seems compromised. Her fixation on political engagement (phone banking, court watching) contrasts with Jessie’s comfortable acceptance of her law firm colleague who supports Trump, or Kyle’s passive inheritance of wealth. Baker never offers easy answers, instead presenting the messy reality of people trying—and often failing—to live according to their professed values.
The Performance of Adulthood
Baker captures brilliantly how her characters perform versions of adulthood for each other that they don’t fully inhabit. The gulf between Clare’s self-critical inner monologue and the confident persona she projects exemplifies this tension. When she reflects that “If you pose long enough as a novelist, as an engaged and devoted citizen… as the sort of woman who acts. Pose long enough as a wife and eventually it will mean something,” she articulates the core fear driving much of her behavior: that she’s merely pretending at a life she doesn’t truly feel.
The Persistence of Teenage Dynamics
Perhaps most poignantly, Baker examines how adolescent relationships create patterns that can persist well into adulthood, even as we outgrow them. As Clare observes, “We’re never going to be any more similar, any closer, than we are right now.” The truth nobody wants to confront is that these friendships might be sustained more by history than present compatibility.
Stylistic Confidence
Baker’s prose is sharp, observant, and often darkly funny. She has a gift for capturing uncomfortable social situations with precision, as when Clare notices the subtle shift in Geoff’s shoulder when Mac calls Jessie “baby.” Her dialogue feels natural while remaining crisp and revealing of character—no small feat when depicting multiple drawn-out group conversations.
Particularly impressive is Baker’s handling of complex moral questions without resorting to didacticism. She presents characters struggling through ethical quandaries in real time, their thoughts contradictory and often hypocritical in ways that feel painfully authentic.
Minor Shortcomings
Despite its considerable strengths, the novel occasionally stumbles. Baker’s tendency to return to the same interpersonal tensions multiple times can feel repetitive, particularly in the middle section where several conversations cover similar territory about political engagement and privilege.
Additionally, while Clare’s perspective dominates, some readers might wish for deeper insight into characters like Mac, whose revelations about how the group has treated him over the years are among the most powerful moments in the book.
Some of the secondary characters, particularly Jamie (Clare’s husband), remain somewhat underdeveloped, primarily existing as foils for Clare’s internal conflict rather than fully realized individuals with their own complexities.
A Worthy Follow-Up to Our Little Racket
Baker’s debut novel, Our Little Racket (2017), examined the fallout of financial crisis through the lens of women connected to a fallen Wall Street titan. Though different in focus, When We Grow Up shares with its predecessor a fascination with moral compromise and the ways economic privilege shapes identity.
Fans of Meg Wolitzer’s The Interestings, Emma Straub’s The Vacationers, or Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s Fleishman Is in Trouble will find much to appreciate here. Baker joins these authors in examining the disillusionment of upper-middle-class millennials with incisive wit and emotional complexity.
Final Thoughts: A Mature and Unflinching Portrait
When We Grow Up succeeds brilliantly as both a character study and a cultural commentary. It asks difficult questions about what we owe our oldest friends, how our pasts shape our present selves, and whether recognition of privilege necessitates relinquishing it. Baker refuses easy answers or moral certainty, instead offering readers the messy, contradictory truth of how we struggle to reconcile who we were with who we’ve become.
The novel’s final scenes, with Clare preparing to return to Boston and her marriage, leave questions deliberately unresolved. This ambiguity feels earned rather than evasive—a recognition that growth rarely happens in dramatic epiphanies but rather in small, often imperceptible shifts over time.
With this sophomore effort, Baker establishes herself as a keen observer of millennial angst and generational disillusionment. More importantly, she proves herself a compassionate chronicler of human fallibility, offering neither absolution nor condemnation but something far more valuable: understanding.
When We Grow Up reminds us that sometimes the hardest part of adulthood isn’t facing forward into an uncertain future, but looking backward at the selves and relationships we’ve outgrown, and deciding which parts are worth carrying forward.