Little White Secrets

I was in the 5th chapter, hoping the slow start would soon improve, when I read this:
Give him a bollocking but dont ask him to spell it. Or it might be a she. Or an it. Then he says, darkly, Or a they.
That last word was in italics. The other characters react with just a bit of banter about political correctness. This exchange had nothing to do with the story. It seems to be just tossed in to make it look current. My adult kid is transgender. This use of transgender and gender nonconforming people is reducing them to the role of curiosities to be bandied about for noveltys sake. The author could do better.

I hate leaving bad reviews, because bad reviews often read as petty and nit-picky. I am not an author but a fairly avid reader, and I am in awe of anyone who can actually write an entire novel. So, any author automatically gets points. That being said, I really struggled to finish this book. The last quarter of the book, I basically skimmed. I felt the story was just too long and dragged out. That probably stems from the fact that I couldn’t connect with a single character from this book. No one, not even the kids, had any redeeming qualities. They were all shallow, both in character development and character portrayal. Especially the protagonist. She is incredibly shallow, judgey, entitled, and just completely unsympathetic. She is absolutely vile towards her daughter (and not particularly subtle about it) and then whines about how her daughter falls in with a “bad girl” and she can’t understand WHY she’s become so rebellious. The main character is overly obsessed with appearance, and bases much of her interactions with others on how they look. She is often mortified when she dresses ” too nicely” for a photoshoot, or to hang out with her “best friend,” to whom she is also crappy. The rest of the cast of characters are also so one dimensional, it’s really hard to care about what happens to any of them. Some people may enjoy the “suspense” of the (predictable) “big reveal,” and the Fatal Attraction feel to the story, however.
I’m sorry for the less-than-stellar review, but this was my particular experience reading this book.

This book is not a light read, nor a fun read. If you like a lot of angst and very flawed characters, maybe its for you. While I know that no one is perfect, this book is about a real ugly mess. I did read all of it, but it left me feeling sad and depressed. No real redemption in this book.

From the outside, they Rossi family is the perfect family. Most families have a few issues, that is life, isnt it? In the Rossi family, they have every problem packed into this family of four; alcoholism, drug addiction, jealousy, liars, accusations of racism, teenage angst, affairs, and denial.

Emily Rossi, the mother, is the narrator of this novel. She teaches Communication at the local university. Her husband, Eric, works in London during the week and is home on weekends. Daniel the oldest child is a super tennis champion, and Zara, the younger daughter, who is overweight, and the problem child. From the outset, we can identify the problems coming down the pike. I was a little put off at the obvious issues, and wondered if this was a simple storyline. No, the problems and issues escalate throughout this family, and never seem to stop.

At times we hear from Eric as he narrates his part of the family problems. An absent dad as he tries to make it up on weekends, but he can barely make his own life work. Daniel finds his way through tennis, and he takes a back seat while Eric, Emily and Zara run off the road. It is a little disconcerting to see so much angst in one family, but as time moves on, we can see that one problem causes another. No one seems to think of therapy until the family is so off the course, it may be too late.

I find it difficult to make a sufficient analysis about this novel, in some ways it is quite compelling, and in others it is too overboard. It seems like the characters have too much going on without all of them cracking up and falling apart. This is like a bad car accident, you cant stop watching, but feel guilty about your curiosity.

Recommended. prisrob 04-01-2020

I was fascinated by this book’s description when I read it at a favorite book review site. I was curious how the author would portray a family’s unraveling after it had seemed to be so together.

While I did find parts of this to be predictable, I still enjoyed the way the author brought the conflict in and ratcheted up the tension in bumpy steps. I thought she did a good job showing how a family that seems to be working well can crumble so quickly.

Just as a warning to my fellow Americans, this is written by a British author, and therefore has British punctuationlike a single quotation mark for dialogueand British spelling and terminology. I know that some of my countrymen find books in English English hard to read, so I thought I’d let you know! But I think it is worth it in this case!

I received a free copy of this book, but that did not affect my review.

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