Not a Happy Family Book Review
Hello everyone! Welcome back to the blog! Today, I am back with another book review, and of course keeping with the theme of murder and thrillers, I finished an old BOTM that I never got to. But I'm so glad I was finally able read it! So, let's get into it!
To start, if you haven't read a Shari Lapena book yet, you need to. She always has such good suspense novels. I've also read The Couple Next Door and An Unwanted Guest both of which were SO good. I highly recommend both--maybe The Couple Next Door a little more than the other.
Anyways, this is about a very wealthy family who basically all hate each other. Okay, that's a bit extreme but, the father hates his children, the kids hate their father, the mother has no backbone and doesn't stand up to her husband. Getting the picture? The children and their partners go to the parents house for Easter dinner. The next day the parents are found brutally murdered. All the kids stand to inherit millions, and now they are all suspects.
So, there were a lot of things I liked about this book. One being that each chapter left you with more questions than answers. I liked when the author would answer and question here and there but then give you ten more to think about. It really builds as the story continues.
Two, I thought the book was fast moving. While the chapters were short, I mostly mean plot wise. It's also not a long book either; it's maybe 340ish pages, so a lot has to happen in a decent amount of time.
Three, the ending was a little bit of a cliffhanger. The ending was different than what I am used to when it comes to thrillers. Most of the time the killer is caught and found guilty. However, it was nice to read something a little different! I don't want to give too much away, but just know it came as a surprise.
Four, I really liked the writing style. We got the perspective of each and every character mentioned. We got the children, the partners, the detectives, the hated aunt, the daughter's best friend, the family lawyer, etc. I know that all my seem like a lot, but every time a perspective changed you would told in the first sentence who was talking or thinking. Believe me with all these characters it was very easy to get confused (which I will touch on more in a minute). I liked being able to know what each character was thinking or keeping to themselves. The siblings all thought one of them did it and would keep secrets of their own that look very incriminating to the reader.
One thing I did not like was how many characters there were. In the beginning, a lot of the characters are introduced...obviously. But there were so many names and relationships being thrown around that it was hard to keep track of everyone for the first couple of chapters. I personally just did not like this. I thought it took away from learning about them and the storyline.
Other than that, I really enjoyed this book and still highly recommend! Overall, I would give it a 3/5 stars. I still think The Couple Next Door was better, but like I said, all her books are really good!
Alright folks, that is all I have for this week! Come back next Wednesday for more content! As always thank you for reading :)