Finished audio 3-15-12, rating 3.75/5, fiction, pub. 2010

Unabridged audio 9 hours 30 minutes. Read by Hope Davis.

Mary Beth Latham has a nice family. She and her husband still share a romantic love life even with three teenagers in the house.  Their oldest daughter, 17 year old Ruby, and her long-time boyfriend Kiernan are breaking up, which is hard since he was like part of their family.  One of her 14 year old twins, Max, is having growing pains and might need to start seeing a therapist.  All pretty standard fare in a fiction novel.  Until…

Well, let’s just say, something happens.  Something that moves the story from a story about motherhood to one about family tragedy.  There is really no way to review this book without giving too much away, so I won’t give details, but I did mostly like it.  The shocking event wasn’t totally unforseen, but it threw the trajectory of the story off just enough to make the book seem like two separate books.  I had some issues with the story before and then after, but the book was ambitious.

I know I read reviews for this but because I waited a while to read it I didn’t remember them, which was a good thing.  If you like your fiction on the darker side I think this would appeal to you.

Have you read it?  Without giving too much away what did you think of the twist in the middle?  I give it a thumbs up just for shock value.

I thought the narration by Davis was excellent.

This was from my library.