Story for the Week
A couple of years ago, I wrote a post called “Do I Know How to Pick ’Em, or What?” It introduced a 5-star review of The Golden Couple by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen and talked about how many 4- and 5-star reviews I had written recently.
Lately, I’ve been feeling like a lot of the books I’ve been reading have been just ok or not ok at all. I have read a handful of great books this year, but my average rating right now is 3.3 stars, down from 3.8 in 2023 and 3.9 in 2022. (Granted, 2022 included the amazing Wishing Tree series, but even taking those out puts 2022 at a 3.7.) If I look back at my Goodreads profile for 2023, I see a lot more 4- and 5-star ratings with a smattering of 1 and 2 stars.
This year feels a lot more average to me, so I started to really look at my ratings. Be warned, this is where the book nerd in me really comes out. I may or may not have pulled my ratings since 2022 and created some pivot tables to get the percentages. 🫣🤫🤭
Looking at everything I’ve read so far this year, 8 of the 22 (36%) were 4-5 stars. In 2023, 27 of 48 (56%) were 4-5 stars. And 2022 was almost exactly flipped from this year so far—35 of 51 (67%) were 4-5 stars. And again, even if I disregard the Wishing Tree series, 23 of 38 (61%) were 4-5 stars. So clearly, this year has been a lot more average and below, and it made me think about why that is.
Obviously, tastes change as we go through life, but have I lost sight of what I really love when I look for books? When I was younger, I read everything Stephen King wrote as soon as it was released. I still buy his books, but I put them aside, and it seems like more of I’ll get to them when I get to them.
King released Holly in September of 2023. It was on my review list, gradually moved down to later and later dates, and now I don’t currently have it scheduled. I love her character from the Bill Hodges Trilogy, but I became disenchanted with King after I forced myself to finish The Dark Tower series. I enjoyed the first five books…classic King storytelling. Books six and seven? 😶🙄 He made himself, the writer Stephen King, a main character, visited by the Gunslinger Roland in book six. 🙄I didn’t think I would ever give King a 1-star review, but that did it. And book seven, for me, was just ok.
For six years, I didn’t read anything new that he wrote. I finally decided to read Fairy Tale because I saw reviews saying it was his best in a while. I rated it 3 stars. So while I like the character of Holly, I’m hesitant. I don’t want to be disappointed, and I really don’t want King’s star to fade any more in my mind.
You Like It Darker arrived in May. It’s 12 short stories and clocks in at 510 pages, so maybe, just maybe, I’ll add it to my list sometime soon. King tends to write pretty long books, and I’m behind schedule for the year, so I need to make sure I have a few posts as a buffer before I pick up another one. 😉
But it makes me think, maybe I’m becoming pickier in my old age. Maybe I’m becoming a book snob. Or maybe my tastes have just morphed that much from horror and thrillers to women’s and contemporary fiction with some rom-coms thrown in. Stephen King to Amanda Prowse in three short decades.
On the positive side, my scheduled reviews for the next four weeks are authors I adore and have frequently reviewed pretty highly. I finished Prowse’s Swimming to Lundy this past Friday and loved it so much that I sent an e-mail to her the minute I finished it. I started reading Sarah Pekkkanen’s upcoming House of Glass this weekend. After that come Emma Lord’s The Break-Up Pact and Ali Brady’s Until Next Summer. You’ll find multiple 4- and 5-star reviews of these authors all over my site.
The book reviewed below is, unfortunately, a pass for me, but the great thing about books is there’s always another one waiting to be read. A quote from the book below stood out that describes that pretty well: “For me, books are magic. They transport me to a different world. Opening the cover of a new book never fails to fill me with hope. It’s as though it’s whispering that I have the power to choose a different life, even if I never seem to leave the one I have.”
Book Review
⭐⭐
2 Stars for One Big Happy Family by Jamie Day
358 pages
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Publication Date: July 16, 2024
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press.
Publisher’s Description
The Precipice is a legendary, family-owned hotel on the rocky coast of Maine. With the recent passing of their father, the Bishop sisters—Iris, Vicki, and Faith—have come for the weekend to claim it. But with a hurricane looming and each of the Bishop sisters harboring dangerous secrets, there’s murder in the air—and not everyone who checks into the Precipice will be checking out.
Each sister wants what is rightfully hers, and in the mix is the Precipice’s nineteen-year-old chambermaid Charley Kelley: smart, resilient, older than her years, and in desperate straits.
The arrival of the Bishop sisters could spell disaster for Charley. Will they close the hotel? Fire her? Discover her habit of pilfering from guests? Or even worse, learn that she’s using a guest room to hide a woman on the run.
************
Main Characters:
- Charley – 19-year-old live-in housekeeper of the Precipice Hotel, preparing for the arrival of the Bishop sisters since the owner of the hotel just died, uses the money she earns to support her grandmother who is living in a care home and suffering from Alzheimer’s
- Rodrigo – front desk manager of the Precipice Hotel and Charley’s closest friend
- Bree – late 20s from Charley’s estimation, they crossed paths a few days earlier at a coffee shop, she shows up at the hotel asking Charley to help her escape an abusive boyfriend
- Vicki – the oldest of the Bishop sisters, married to Todd, together they own a chain of jewelry stores in and around Boston
- Iris – the middle of the Bishop sisters, has battled drug addiction since she was a teenager
- Faith – the youngest of the Bishop sisters, married to Hope, made a living as a high-end model when she was younger
- Quinn – Vicki and Todd’s son, a senior studying philosophy at Dartmouth with a minor in art history
- Oliver – Faith and Hope’s 14-year-old son, didn’t talk until he was about five and mostly talks in rhymes, his doctors don’t know why but Hope thinks he’s “special”
- Brenda – the attorney who will be executing George Bishop’s will and previously almost got Rodrigo’s family deported
- Janice – runs Guiding Way where Charley’s grandmother lives, helped Charley when her grandmother could no longer be left alone, has power of attorney over Charley’s grandmother’s finances
Where to start? Like any good mystery, One Big Happy Family has a large list of main characters (aka suspects), and you expect some twists to add to the suspense. A classic locked-room mystery, the story traps the characters in the hotel with a hurricane looming, so one of the characters must be the killer when one of them ends up dead. This definitely has twists, but I would argue that there are too many, they’re a bit “out there” at times, and many of them are eyeroll-worthy.
The story here takes place over a matter of a few days, with a section in the middle of the book that flashes back to the Bishop sisters’ childhood into their 20s. Chapter 1 begins in the middle of a hurricane just as the lights in the hotel go out. Chapter 2 rolls back to three days prior while Charley prepares the hotel for the sisters’ arrival for their father’s funeral and the reading of the will.
To set the stage, Charley began working at the Precipice Hotel two years prior. Her grandmother needed full-time care, and Charley was desperate for money, so she didn’t realize or chose to ignore the fact that George Bishop was a bit of a lech with a thing for young girls. It never got to THAT point with Charley, but he definitely made advances.
During her time at the hotel, Charley started stealing from customers—a little here, a little there—to help pay the rent for her grandmother at Guiding Way. When Janice tells Charley that she’s going to raise the rent, Charley becomes even more desperate. When Bree approaches Charley about needing a place to hide out from her boyfriend and being able to pay a good sum of money in a few days, Charley agrees to let her stay hidden in the hotel.
Charley feels a lot of pressure because she isn’t sure what the sisters will do with the hotel, and she needs her live-in job. Despite the weather forecast, the Bishop sisters haven’t changed their plans to come to the hotel with their respective spouses and children for their father’s funeral and reading of the will. So in the midst of Charley’s personal financial crisis, with a hurricane bearing down on the coast, Charley still has to prepare the hotel. She also has to keep Bree well-hidden since she’s pocketing the money Bree has offered.
That’s the gist.
Before I get to the spoilers, this book challenged me in a bunch of other ways. The description calls Charley “older than her years.” I would argue she’s the exact opposite. Yes, she holds down a full-time job to take care of her grandmother, but she put herself into this horrible situation through her own naivete AND she’s a thief.
The attachment and loyalty she develops to Bree and Quinn is completely unrealistic in a couple of days. She literally met Bree because Bree asked for her recommendation on coffee. Granted, the money Bree offers for Charley to hide her out is a huge part of Charley’s feelings about Bree, but the fact that she trusts someone she doesn’t know at all is naive at best as well as ridiculously stupid.
In regard to the writing style in general, the point of view makes sense…for the most part. The majority of the book is in the first person from Charley’s perspective. The flashback to the Bishop sisters 40 years prior changes to third person, which is fine. It’s a flashback, and a lot of books use this—different timelines, different points of view. But at one point in the present day…randomly…the story shifts to the third person. Why? Because it’s focused on something Quinn is doing outside, and Charley isn’t there. The story can’t be told otherwise, and this is a huge flaw in the writing. I would have preferred Charley seeing him from a distance and running out to help.
On top of that, so many times, I just shook my head and thought to myself, “Really?!”
- “Faith works hard to maintain her thin frame but learns soon enough that the good advice she gets about diet and exercise is empty words, as toothless as a newborn.”
- “After the reading, Oliver appeared drained, as though the experience had depleted him of his lifeforce.”
- “Vicki holds her ground. Tension rises. The air holds an electric charge. I’m thinking of the greatest standoffs in film history, movies I watched with my nana before her memory declined. Darth Vader versus Obi-Wan Kenobi. Harry Potter versus Voldemort. The Ghostbusters against the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.”
***SPOILERS*** SPOILERS***SPOILERS***
Now for the convoluted spoilers that come out during the hurricane when everyone is trapped in the hotel. Buckle up. In chronological order (versus plot order):
- The Bishop sisters caused an accident when they were younger that resulted in a fatality. We (and they) assume it was a previous housekeeper Christine who their father took a liking to. The sisters vowed never to tell anyone what they had done.
- Iris goes into a tailspin, presumably from the guilt, and becomes a drug addict, acting up in school. Her father kicks her out of the house at 18 and tells her not to come back. Two years later, Faith sneaks away on her own, promising never to return.
- Iris becomes pregnant and decides to get clean because she wants to keep the baby. She goes to a home for unwed mothers, starts attending Narcotics Anonymous, and gets a job cleaning houses. At some point, exhausted from caring for her newborn son, she finds Vicodin in the medicine cabinet of a home she’s cleaning.
- Faith meets someone who promises to help her with her modeling career. She starts a sort of quid pro quo relationship with him (but falls in love with him), and he secures her the cover of Vogue by ruining the career of another model. When she finds out she parts ways with him.
- Vicki attends the Vogue cover launch, and before she can find Faith at the event, she meets a man off to the side and spends quite of bit of time talking and flirting with him. She introduces him to Faith as her “new friend.”
- If you haven’t figured it out yet, Faith’s agent and Vicki’s new friend are both Todd. Faith never mentioned Todd’s name to Vicki because she didn’t want Vicki to dig up dirt on him. She lets Vicki marry Todd without ever telling her.
- Back to Iris, the one-time Vicodin turned into a downward spiral. When her son is about two years old and she is about to lose him to foster care, she calls Vicki begging her for help. Vicki and Todd agree to adopt (you guessed it) Quinn as long as Iris never tells him who she really is.
- Several years later after Faith and Hope are together and wanting a baby via IVF, Todd and Faith reconnect and start an affair. Faith gets pregnant and tells Hope that she went to a special clinic. Unbeknownst to everyone, Oliver overhears a conversation between Todd and Faith when he is about four years old and learns that Todd is his father (which he reveals in the middle of the hurricane).
- Fast forward to the present day, George Bishop is dead and has divided his property. Vicki (and therefore Todd) gets one-third. Iris gets one-third, but it’s in trust, which is run by Todd. The final third goes to Todd because Faith left when George assumed she would be the one to take over the hotel. And if something were to happen to Todd, Brenda the attorney controls his portion.
- And let’s not forget about Bree, who is not actually an abused girlfriend. She’s Christine the housekeeper’s daughter, and Christine was impregnated by (maybe you guessed this too) George. She didn’t die in the car accident because it was the cook’s son Samuel driving the car. Samuel and Christine were in love and planning to get married. Christine died years later from cervical cancer caused by HPV, which she presumably caught from George.
- George willed to Bree a painting worth several million dollars. Brenda the attorney knows about it and doesn’t say anything to the sisters because she plans to find the painting and keep it for herself.
Oh…and the killers? Hope kills Todd because she knows about the affair, and Bree kills Brenda because Brenda wants the painting.
Through all of this, Charley thinks that Bree is her friend and the person she can trust the most in the house since Rodrigo is nowhere to be found. And she starts feeling romantic toward Quinn. Despite the fact that someone in the house is a murderer and there is a looming hurricane, she talks about how romantic it feels to be searching the house with him and how she loves the way he says her name.
WHAT?!?!
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