Something in the Water by Catherine Steadman – ☆☆☆

Hmm. This one is actually a little harder for me to rate. I originally gave it four, but I think I am leaning more towards 3 stars — I think it would be a 3.5 star book, really, but not necessarily one you round up.

The novel opens with a bang — Erin, our protagonist, is panting in the woods as she is digging out a grave, trying to cut corners and avoid going six feet deep. Oh, and one more thing? The body she needs to bury is her husband’s. From here, the novel rewinds back, leading us up until this point. Erin is a documentary filmmaker working on her next film, which revolves around three different inmates for various crimes, and following them on their release day. Her fiance, Mark, is an investment banker, and the two are weeks away from their big wedding day. That’s when things start to unravel — Mark is fired from his job, and the two are now panicking about money.

They cancel all the extravagances of their wedding, opting for a smaller, low key option and reducing their honeymoon in Bora Bora from three weeks to two. While on the honeymoon, they’re sailing in the ocean when something hits the side of their boat. Thunk thunk thunk. Apprehensive, they peer over the side and notice hundreds of reams of paper just floating in the water. Thunk thunk thunk. Mark reaches over the side of the boat and extracts a big black, heavy bag that is padlocked close. He and Erin then put their diving gear on and go into the water, determined to see where this came from. Ten feet down, they spot it: a small plane, shipwrecked. Erin starts to panic and heads for the surface while Mark goes down to investigate. When he comes back up, he informs her that three people are in the plane, and that they are not very good people. The story really takes off from here, as Erin and Mark try to figure out what to do with the bag, if they should open it, and the consequences of the decision they make to, indeed, open the bag.

I have mixed feelings on this book for a few reasons. One, I wasn’t huge on the narrator. I just didn’t really like her voice, and it’s told through first person, so liking her voice is kind of important. I also just didn’t like her very much in general. She made very poor, impulsive decisions and never seemed to care or face much consequence, and she was also very greedy and a huge liar. At various points in the book, I just kept getting irritated and annoyed at how stupid she was and the stupid decisions and choices she was making.

Two, I really didn’t love the resolution. I had accurately guessed at several of the twists, but the payoff isn’t great because we never get the other side of the story. Erin decides things in her head and decides that’s why other character’s must have made the choices and decisions they did, but we never actually hear it out of the other character’s mouth. We’re supposed to just take it on Erin’s word that she is 100% correct in her assumptions. Considering what the reveal turns out to be, this was very disconcerting for me because I felt like there were a lot of obvious explanations for behaviors and decisions made, but she never explores them and just assumes that the worst must be true and that’s that.

Third, it takes entirely too long for the story to build. The bag hitting the boat is truly the catalyst of the novel, and that doesn’t happen until almost 40% into the book.

The positive is that once it does get going, you do end up being pulled in and it is a page turner that, I believe, you’ll really enjoy in the moment. I enjoyed it, at least, but it was after I had put the book down and started thinking about it that I realized that once the thrill of the ride is over, there are a lot of things that don’t make sense or are left unanswered or are just completely unsatisfying.

I enjoyed the book, but I think there was so much more that could have been done with it, hence rounding it down to a 3-star read.

Thank you to NetGalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Something in the Water is out now!

All We Ever Wanted by Emily Giffin – ☆☆☆

Nina Browning is living the good life after marrying into Nashville’s elite. More recently, her husband made a fortune selling his tech business, and their adored son has been accepted to Princeton. Yet sometimes the middle-class small-town girl in Nina wonders if she’s strayed from the person she once was.

Tom Volpe is a single dad working multiple jobs while struggling to raise his headstrong daughter, Lyla. His road has been lonely, long, and hard, but he finally starts to relax after Lyla earns a scholarship to Windsor Academy, Nashville’s most prestigious private school.

Amid so much wealth and privilege, Lyla doesn’t always fit in—and her overprotective father doesn’t help—but in most ways, she’s a typical teenage girl, happy and thriving.

Then, one photograph, snapped in a drunken moment at a party, changes everything. As the image spreads like wildfire, the Windsor community is instantly polarized, buzzing with controversy and assigning blame.

I’ve waited a few days to write a review, trying to sort out how I felt about this one. My first Emily Griffin book, I had heard a lot about her but didn’t know what to really expect. There were a lot of positives — the writing, for one, is great and makes for an easy, enjoyable read that you get lost in. Ultimately, though, I think that while the subject is timely, the message got muddled and was also just really disappointing.

All We Ever Wanted tells the story of Tom, Nina, And Lila, whose lives become entangled. Tom is Lyla’s father, and the two live together on the poorer side of Nashville. Lyla’s mother, an alcoholic, left a long time ago, and blows in and out of their life only sporadically. Nina is married to Kirk, a wealthy man from old money Nashville. She herself grew up modestly, falling in love with Kirk in college and settling into a housewife role to their now 18 year old son, Finch, and being a philanthropist. Finch has just gotten accepted into Princeton, and Nina feels content and proud of the boy she raised — until she finds out, right before being honored at a fundraiser, that her son took a photograph of a passed out girl with her breast out and holding a green Uno card, with the caption something like, “I guess she finally got her green card.” He then distributes the picture out on Snapchat, and it makes its way around the school and to all the parents. Tom, understandably, is infuriated that this happened to his daughter, while Lyla doesn’t think it’s as big of a deal and is more focused on landing Finch as a boyfriend. Nina is horrified and can’t believe her son can do that — and equally stunned that Kirk thinks it’s no big deal. As the families try to figure out how to navigate through this, Nina is also trying to navigate the life she has and how she grew into it.

As mentioned before, I really enjoyed the writing. It was easy to read and you wanted to keep going, which I really love when I can find in a book. Reading books told through different narrators is not always my favorite, but I think Giffin was good about having distinct voices for them. Lyla felt like a teenager without also being over the top and a character. Tom was angry and complex but also relatable. Nina was a great character just in general — not afraid to call out even her own family in the name of what is right.

My problem, I guess, was more in the fact that it felt like Giffin was trying to send a message about privilege and the type of people it creates — entitled, aggressive, and not very nice a lot of the time, particularly towards people they feel are beneath them. But at the end, they face no consequences for their actions. They get away with everything. They don’t learn any lessons.

Is that how it is in the real world? Yes, and in that way, the book is realistic. But for me, I like to read to escape and I don’t particularly enjoy reading a book about horrible people who, at the end, never learn their lesson or are held accountable for their crimes. For that, I think the book ended up being just okay for me. Still, though, I enjoyed it enough that I think I’ll check out some of Giffin’s other books.

Thanks to NetGalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! All We Ever Wanted is out June 26th!

Her Name Was Rose by Claire Allan – ☆☆☆

Her name was Rose. You watched her die. And her death has created a vacancy. 

When Emily lets a stranger step out in front of her, she never imagines that split second will change her life. But after Emily watches a car plough into the young mother – killing her instantly – she finds herself unable to move on.

And then she makes a decision she can never take back.

Because Rose had everything Emily had ever dreamed of. A beautiful, loving family, a great job and a stunning home. And now Rose’s husband misses his wife, and their son needs a mother. Why couldn’t Emily fill that space?

But as Emily is about to discover, no one’s life is perfect … and not everything is as it seems.

This one was really disappointing for me because it sounded like something that would be totally up my alley, but I just could not connect with the protagonist, who was a complete and utter idiot and also pretty unhinged in general, while remaining convinced she was perfectly well. I also felt like a lot of it was obvious from the very beginning chapters, so it was also extra infuriating that the protagonist, Emily, was so blind and stupid to everything going on around her.

Emily works for CallSolutions, a customer service job that she hates and does on autopilot. Her life has been a mess for the past several years; she was in an abusive relationship years ago with her ex-boyfriend, Ben, and she still hasn’t recovered. She abuses anxiety pills and alcohol, and can’t get her life together. One day, she’s riding an elevator down with a woman and her baby; the woman is singing softly to her baby, and Emily is struck by how lucky they are, and she lets the woman exit the elevator first. In what seems like seconds, a car comes speeding by, hitting the woman and driving off. The woman dies instantly, her twisted body and dead eyes staring blankly at Emily. Terrified and in panic, Emily flees the scene. She is convinced that her ex boyfriend, Ben, is to blame for this, that this should have been her who was dead, and that after five years of not being together, he has finally come to exact his revenge on her. The plot unfolds from here, as we learn the woman’s name is Rose. Emily gets fired from CallSolutions for lying about going to the dentist when she was really going to Rose’s funeral; in fact, she has been stalking Rose’s social media since she died and has become fully obsessed with her and her life. So obsessed, in fact, that she applies for the job Rose had before dying, and then starts to push her way into Rose’s husband, Cian’s, life. Taking her job wasn’t enough, Rose now wants her husband and her baby, too. The police continue to sniff around, as Rose’s death is now ruled a murder. The kid driving the car that struck Rose also mysteriously turns up dead – an apparent suicide that was not a suicide at all – and the cops are trying to get to the bottom of it.

This book was just… something else. Emily was probably one of my least favorite protagonists ever. There was nothing remotely likeable about her, I didn’t feel bad for her, I wasn’t worried about her… in fact, I just found her super pathetic and stupid. Like, really, it has been FIVE YEARS since you broke up with Ben, but you think he got behind the wheel of a car to wipe you out? Even though you also know he no longer even lives anywhere close by? Even though he was the one who left you, who you caught cheating on you, who never actually really gave two shits about you? I get that trauma and PTSD can be a real thing, but its been five years. You’re taking anxiety pills, which means you have to be seeing mental health doctors, so it just seems a little absurd that you’re still this caught up on something that hasn’t actually been an issue for five years.

It was also just truly disgusting and unforgivable to me the way she really just set her sights on Rose’s life and was determined to make it all hers. Not only did you see this woman get killed and fled the crime scene without even speaking to police officers, you then go to her funeral, you apply for her job, and then you set your sights on her husband and child? Rose hasn’t even been dead a month when we’re forced to hear Emily wax poetic about what a beautiful man Cian is, how full of emotion is, how much he loved Rose, have to listen to her fantasizing about what it would be like to be with him sexually, to be his wife, to step in as Jack’s mother. Like, this woman is fully unhinged and completely blind and oblivious to it all. It was also obvious from the very, very start that Cian was a controlling, abusive asshole and that there was more to the story of him and Rose, but of course, Emily is blind to all of that, too — even AFTER already going through her own abusive relationship five years prior. Cian is very obviously using her and manipulating her the whole entire time, and she’s all “la-di-da-di, I love him so much! We are going to be so happy!”

Because I didn’t care a lick about Emily, I also just didn’t really give a hoot about Rose or what happened to her, either. The reveal over who was responsible for her death was unexpected, I guess, but again — I just didn’t care. Overall, this book was just very ‘meh’ for me, and I probably wouldn’t be quick to read another of this author’s works, especially if there are more protagonists like Emily.

Thank you to NetGalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. “Her Name Was Rose” will be out June 28, 2018.

The Museum of Us by Tara Wilson Redd – ☆☆☆

Sadie loves her rocker boyfriend Henry and her running partner and best friend Lucie, but no one can measure up to her truest love and hero, the dazzling and passionate George. George, her secret.

When something goes wrong and Sadie is taken to the hospital calling out for George, her hidden life may be exposed. Now she must confront the truth of the past, and protect a world she is terrified to lose.

I quite enjoyed this book, but it’s sort of hard for me to figure out how to describe it or what to say here. What I will say is that the blurb is not really a good indicator of what the plot of this book actually is about. The whole book unfolds while Sadie is being held in a psychiatric ward after wrapping her car around a tree whilst driving alone. Sadie was lost in a “daydream” and didn’t see the tree in front of her. Her daydreams are not really daydreams, though, and are really hallucinations — which is where a big problem with this book lies with me.

If you’re going to write about mental health, then don’t do a half assed job. It is important to tell these stories and have people read them, but mental health is not something that a character just solves on her own. Admitting the truth out loud does not mean you are suddenly cured — and that’s basically the sort of the message that this book ends up sending.

Sadie always knows that George isn’t real — she can admit that to herself, but she cannot talk about him to other people. He’s her secret — someone she conjures up when she’s alone and they go on adventures together through the halls of Hogwarts, through the closet into Narnia, etc. But it’s not just a day dream — George is real to Sadie; she can see him. She talks to him. When she disappears from reality, she is having conversations with him, holding his hand, kissing him. On the outside, when people observe her, she is talking to herself, smiling, making hand gestures. She literally loses contact with the human world and can’t even hear people talking to her – hence wrapping her car around a tree, or another situation, where she was jogging with a dog and left to “meet” George while on her run, and ended up running in front of a car and almost getting the dog killed.

I feel like all of this is important to say because it seemed clear to me that Sadie was having issues beyond just being sad and depressed. Having an imaginary friend is one thing, having hallucinations and vivid images and experiences is something else. Yet, none of that is ever explored in the novel, and at the end, she is released from the psych ward after only 12 days and with a prescription for an anti-depressant. It isn’t until the day she is leaving the hospital that she even admits to her doctor who George is and what he means to her — and it seems really alarming and wrong that a doctor examining her mental health had already decided to release her without even understanding the scope of her whole sickness.

At the end, Sadie decides that she is leaving George behind and that’s that – that’s how the novel ends. Except, that’s not how mental health works, and it’s disappointing that this is how the author chose to conclude her novel.

The writing was excellent and felt more mature than a typical Young Adult novel, but in the end, it kind of felt like a slap in the face to people who actually struggle with mental health issues. I wish someone who actually understood mental health issues, or made an attempt to, had written the novel.

The Drama Teacher by Koren Zailckas – ☆☆☆

This one was a bit of a slower book and I considered stopping a few times throughout reading it. I did end up finishing it, but it was just okay. There were parts where it would start to get exciting, but then would just fizzle out again. Gracie and her two kids live in the Catskills; her husband, Randy, spends most of his time in Florida trying to run his real estate business. Times have been hard and money is tight; the bank is foreclosing on their house and, desperate for money, Gracie goes back to the one thing she knows how to do best: scam people. Raised by a thief of a father, Gracie spent her formative years as an accomplice to his cons. Gracie sets herself on a housewife from nearby Woodstock, and while things went smoothly for awhile, things eventually took a turn and Gracie and her kids are on the run again. This book was a slow burn that eventually connects everyone and everything together in a final stand off at the end. It was a little too slow for me and I found myself taking a lot of breaks for this one and contemplated not finishing it several times as well. I think this could have been trimmed and condensed and probably would have been a lot more enjoyable. Despite this, I will say that the book was very well written. Gracie is not always the most likable person, but yet the reader still understands her motivations, even if they don’t always agree. The way the flashbacks unfold was done well, too, and very slowly Zailckas starts to show that Gracie’s memory is actually maybe not what she always thought, as memories start breaking through the surface of her mind. There were a few points where she surprised me and something I didn’t see coming happened, and it was really these points that were the saving graces because it was what kept me interested and continuing to read. I wish there were more of those moments in the book. Thanks to NetGalley for this book in exchange for an honest review! The Drama Teacher will be out on August 7th, 2018.