Tag:

Domestic

Review

The Block Party

by Brian Kenney

A brilliantly structured debut—alternately witty, poignant, and terrifying—that follows a cluster of suburban Boston families through one year, from summer block party to summer block party. The drama unfolds on the well-off Alton Road, a cul-de-sac in the town of Meadowbrook. While the point of view shifts throughout, at the center are Alex Fox, former lawyer, current mediator, and full-time drinker, and her daughter, Lettie, the high-school girl who dresses all in black and is committed to saving the environment. Around them swirl two planetary systems that rarely intersect: one made up of the adult women—there’s more than a touch of Desperate Housewives with this crew, although they somehow manage to keep the peace—and the other made up of teens, who have their own sordid histories and hatreds. As for the dads, they show up only to create turmoil and threaten violence. As the year goes on, the gossip and scandals grow, from the neighbor who’s a star on OnlyFans to the high school girl with the middle-aged lover to the dad who’s hiding a secret obsession. Ultimately, the suspense is too great, and the little world of Alton Road blows up, leaving no one untouched. Readers will love this fresh, satirical take on suspense in suburbia. Perfect for fans of Fabian Nicieza.

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Review

Night Will Find You

by Henrietta Thornton

Vivvy Bouchet—the last name is one her mother made up as fitting for a psychic—is an astrophysicist who’s working to prove that a glimpse of far, far off light she once detected is artificial light from extraterrestrial life. There’s serious grant money in the balance, but she’s pulled further and further from her day job by her side gig as a psychic working with an old friend (it’s complicated), Mike, who’s a cop. Mike and his gruff, hostile coworker want Vivvy’s take on the case of Lizzie, a missing girl. Lizzie’s mother is in jail for the girl’s murder, but swears she’s innocent, and Vivvy gets a vision that there’s more to the situation than the police know. Discovering Lizzie’s fate and who’s responsible begins to take over Vivvy’s life, not only because she’s determined to find the girl but also because an Alex Jones-type radio and podcast host starts making her life a misery. Getting his fans away from her home and getting back to her research, if her colleagues can ever take her seriously again, are the goals. But Vivvy’s relationship with Mike isn’t the only complication, making this a maelstrom of worldly and otherworldly detective work, satisfying twists, and relationship drama. A fast-moving thriller with an unusual protagonist.

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Review

A Good Family

by Henrietta Thornton

Katie Kuhlmann lives in an Edina, Minnesota, neighborhood called Country Club, and it’s like what you would imagine. Katie didn’t grow up rich, but she married old Minnesota money and now lives among neighbors who might “chip in on a private jet” so they can all vacation in the same luxurious place. Having endured a sad upbringing with her grandparents after her parents and brothers were killed in a car crash, Katie’s happy to roll with the pampered oddness that is her new life as long as she’s got her family close. But her safe haven is beginning to show signs of rot. When he’s not ignoring his family or disappearing for lengthy stretches, Katie’s husband, Jack, is angry and tense. Out of the blue, a wayward college friend of his arrives and takes up residence in the family’s garden apartment, and Katie fears that things are going from bad to worse. She has no idea how dire things will get and the gut-punch of betrayal that’s in store. When her husband confesses a crime to her—is it even true?—it’s just the beginning. Goldman writes a woman’s inner voice perfectly, and his background as a TV writer (Seinfeld, Ellen) shows on the page, with tense and thrilling scenes quickly alternating with romantic interludes and domestic entanglements. Jodi Piccoult readers will enjoy Katie’s climb out of a painful trap.

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Review

Bad Summer People

by Brian Kenney

Yes, it’s only October. But my money is on Bad Summer People as the best beach book of the summer of 2023. Set in Salcombe, a made-up community on Fire Island—not the like the gay Pines, more the reclusive and ritzy Saltaire—this book, in the great literary tradition of Peyton Place, has it all: adultery, fashion, tons of gossip, backbiting, lying, hot sex with the tennis pro, tasteful plastic surgery, alcoholism, and even a corpse. Plus the sort of casual racism and classism liberal one-percenters indulge in. It opens with a prologue, set at the end of August, in which a body is discovered face down off the boardwalk. The book then backs up to late June, as the all-white residents arrive from the Upper East side and Scarsdale for the start of a new season. From there we follow the tumultuous summer in chronological order, moving quite handily among a group of narrators, from the above-mentioned Stanford tennis coach to the Filipino nanny to the gay Yale student/bartender and many more. At the gravitational center of the book are Jen Weinstein and Lauren Parker, the “it moms” who married into Salcombe—their husbands are best friends—and oversee the social action. Not another word from me, lest I spoil any of the fun, except to say the identities of both the victim and the murderer pack quite the punch. This book really hits the sweet spot for popular fiction and will appeal to a broad swathe of readers.

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Review

Gone Tonight

by Henrietta Thornton

Catherine Sterling’s personal and professional worlds are beginning to collide: she’s a nurse who cares for patients with Alzheimer’s disease, and her mother is starting to show classic symptoms. The two live together, making the forgetfulness hard to miss, with Ruth Sterling looking very confused when recent events are discussed and forgetting words—calling ice cubes “water squares,” for example. Ruth is reluctant to get any scans that could confirm the likely diagnosis—her mother died of Alzheimer’s, she says, and she knows what’s ahead. But then Catherine makes a discovery that causes her to doubt that her mother’s problems are real. As the point of view shifts between the two women, readers get Ruth’s first-person point of view; her odd behavior is hiding an explosive past that Catherine knows nothing about. Readers are in for a wild cat-and-mouse game as this tight duo (boundaries, what are they?) faces terrible odds when Catherine delves into her mother’s past and Ruth hides the pair from an encroaching threat. There are some very sad moments here, related to dire poverty and child sexual abuse. Overall, it’s an eye-opening look at how “our minds…talk us out of things we don’t want to know.”

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Review

A Mother Would Know

by Henrietta Thornton

Remember We Need to Talk about Kevin, Lionel Shriver’s dark novel about a mother’s fraught efforts to understand her violent son? Here, neighbors believe Valerie Jacobs has set up her own version of Shriver’s book: her son, Hudson, suspected years ago of a violent crime, is back home and seems eager to live off mom. Valerie’s daughter, Kendra, is against the arrangement. Valerie has always spoiled Hudson, Kendra says between snapping at her mother’s attempts to be a new grandma and pushing miracle cures for Valerie’s seemingly encroaching Alzheimer’s disease. Then a shock crashes into the setup: a young woman is found murdered in the neighborhood and Valerie’s neighbors immediately point the finger at her home. Even Valerie herself suspects Hudson, except when she’s suspecting herself and her memory gaps. Garza (When I Was You) excels at making our heads spin as facts emerge, some from the present and others the past, adding to both the murkiness and the drama. This tale is constructed on a scaffold of slights, family grudges, deceit, and quiet love, all of which build to an out-of-the-blue reveal. This isn’t—thankfully!—as dark as We Need to Talk about Kevin, but it’s every bit as gripping.

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Review

Locust Lane

by Henrietta Thornton

The puzzle pieces that make up the rich town of Emerson, Massachusetts don’t quite fit and in the cracks between, unhappiness grows. Michel is a striving Lebanese restaurant owner, his son Christopher a quiet kid who’s trying his hardest to fit into a very white town, with his most strident effort expended on friendship with bully Jack. Michel’s fancy restaurant often hosts the ladies-who-lunch crowd, most frequently Alice, Michel’s married girlfriend who’s stepmom to volatile teen Hannah. The façade of prosperous goodness collapses in a heap of gossip and accusations when “that girl Eden,” who’s from the other side of the tracks and has a troubled background, is found dead after partying with Christopher, Hannah, and Jack. The usual haves-and-have-nots divide becomes starker as the pressure mounts on the police to solve this quickly, and secrets and bigotries are revealed…but who did it is tantalizingly unclear until the very end. All through the book, the testing and twisting of relationships keeps the drama high and Amidon leaves us pondering the question of what’s worth sacrificing for love. For Celeste Ng’s many fans.

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Review

A Flaw in the Design

by Brian Kenney

Oates, Nathan. A Flaw in the Design. March, 2023. 304p. Random.
Gil and his wife are living their dream. He’s a writing professor at a small Vermont college, she’s an artist, their two daughters are as smart as they are well-behaved. Sure, money is tight, but life is rich. Until his sister and her husband die under distinctly odd circumstances and their only child, 17-year-old Matthew, comes to live with them. To say there’s history here is an understatement. Gil’s sister married way up, well into the realm of the one percenters. While the wealth disparity made for awkwardness, it’s Matthew’s crazy, violent behavior that sets everyone on edge. The last time the two families got together, seven years ago at the sister’s house in Montauk, Matthew tried to drown Gil’s youngest daughter. But Matthew 2.0 is completely different. He charms the daughters, ingratiates himself with Gil’s wife, and even signs up for Gil’s fiction-writing class. But while most of the world is taken in by this brilliant and handsome young man, Gil remains a suspicious outlier. Slowly Matthew begins to undermine Gil, submitting for class stories that fantasize about the death of Gil’s daughters and explain how Matthew’s own parents were killed. Eventually Gil is alone in believing that Matthew is a psychopath, creating a growing estrangement from his own family, who are convinced he’s fallen off the deep end. Yes, this is a thriller, but a deeply thoughtful one that skillfully plays at what is true, what is imagined, and how genius can be used in the evilest of ways.

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Review

The House Guest

by Henrietta Thornton

Alyssa, née Alice, Macallen, has changed her name and subjugated everything else about herself to please her unpleasable husband, Bill, who has left with no explanation. All Alyssa knows for sure is that he’s taking his wealth with him and she has no job and no prenup, which he insisted was unnecessary because he was going to love her forev—you know the rest. Anyway, Bill’s gone and Alyssa’s sitting in a hotel bar nursing her sorrows when she meets a woman who may be even worse off. Bree Lorrance is living at the hotel after getting away from an abusive boyfriend. She moves into Alyssa’s guest house, and soon readers and Alyssa are wondering how things have taken such a fast turn. Far from lonely and terrifying, Alyssa’s days are now taken up with helping her friend, who encounters a new tragedy that sets the women, and another player who becomes involved and moves in, on an exciting trajectory. We’re left wondering whom Alyssa can trust in her new life, if anyone. Are some of these strange new people part of Bill’s team or out to get her for some other reason? Or maybe Alyssa is making everything up and we’ve got an unreliable narrator on our hands…it’s impossible to know until Ryan brings all to a satisfying ending that readers will never see coming. The author’s fans will snap this up; it’s also a must for Liane Moriarty’s readers.

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Review

Dark Rivers to Cross

by Henrietta Thornton

Jonah and Luke Blackwell are teen brothers-by-adoption who are close in age, and close generally. But they disagree on one big thing: whether to find out their origins. Adopting from foster care, Lena Blackwell was planning to take in one child, but on the big day found him holding hands with a smaller boy, and the rest is history. But it’s history that Jonah can’t leave alone. Lena is at first mildly dissuasive, saying only that the adoption was closed for a reason. As time goes on, however, she grows increasingly frightened that Jonah will uncover why she’s a virtual recluse at the Millinocket, Maine inn that she and Luke run while Jonah attends college. Curious too is why the inn is owned by Coop, the Native Penobscot man whom the boys thought was an employee. And why, when a guest arrives at the inn who seems to know Lena from the past, is she bundled off to stay with the competition? As flashbacks that are haunted with fear take readers back to Lena’s long-ago struggles and her arrival in Millinocket, present-day determination, exasperation, and love bring us closer to an unpredictable and scary finale. This fast read is for those who enjoy strong protagonists digging their way out of tough circumstances.

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