Story for the Week
We live in a world full of secrets. Some secrets are good—surprise birthday parties, engagement plans, Christmas presents, buying a new home, having a baby—things that will be great news for others when they finally find out and that we just want or need to enjoy by ourselves for a little while. Some secrets we keep because we don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings (your butt really does look big in those pants) or we fear that someone else will judge us or view us differently (I voted for this guy and not that guy).
On a broader scale, every family has skeletons in their closet 🦴, things that get revealed sometimes decades after a family member has passed. Some of them were scandalous when our parents or grandparents went through them, but as times change, we wonder why they were such a big deal to keep secret for so long. Regardless of the situation, people are interested in the gossip, and the juicier the better. Every family has secrets…and no, I won’t tell you mine, even if you do tell me yours. 😊🤐
Family skeletons are the underlying theme of this next story.
Book Review
⭐⭐⭐
3 Stars for The Second Home by Christina Clancy
340 pages
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Publication Date: June 2, 2020
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press.
Publisher’s Description
After a disastrous summer spent at her family summer home on Cape Cod, 17-year-old Ann Gordon was left with a secret that changed her life forever, and created a rift between her sister, Poppy, and their adopted brother, Michael.
Now, 15 years later, her parents have died, leaving Ann and Poppy to decide the fate of the Wellfleet home that’s been in the Gordon family for generations. For Ann, the once-beloved house is tainted with bad memories. Poppy loves the old saltbox, but after years spent chasing waves around the world, she isn’t sure she knows how to stay in one place.
Just when the sisters decide to sell, Michael re-enters their lives with a legitimate claim to the house. But more than that, he wants to set the record straight about that long ago summer. Reunited after years apart, these very different siblings must decide if they can continue to be a family—and the house just might be the glue that holds them together.
Told through the shifting perspectives of Ann, Poppy, and Michael, this assured and affecting debut captures the ache of nostalgia for summers past and the powerful draw of the places we return to again and again. It is about second homes, second families, and second chances. Tender and compassionate, incisive and heartbreaking, The Second Home is the story of a family you’ll quickly fall in love with, and won’t soon forget.
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Main Characters:
- Ann – the older sister, known as “Ann with the Plan,” reliable, focused, always wanted to attend college on the East Coast, and works in Boston.
- Noah – Ann’s teenage son, who doesn’t want her to sell the house in Wellfleet.
- Poppy – the younger sister, a lot more of a free spirit, lives a vagabond lifestyle as a yoga instructor, making just enough money to survive, and moving from one country to another as the mood strikes.
- Michael – the brother, about the same age as Ann, adopted as a teen who spent just a couple of years with the family but had his most meaningful moments in Wellfleet, the only place he ever felt at home.
- Ed & Connie – Ann, Poppy, and Michael’s parents, live a bit like hippies, spend most of the year at home with the kids in Milwaukee but summers at their home in Wellfleet, which has been in the family for decades.
- Anthony & Maureen – the Shaws, a couple who Ann and Michael work for the summer they are 17.
Trigger warning: sexual assault, suicide
Christina Clancy’s Gordon family is definitely one that I won’t soon forget as the description indicates, but I didn’t fall in love with them. As the Prologue of The Second Home begins, we meet Ann who is awaiting a realtor’s arrival at her childhood summer home in Wellfleet, MA, and she’s planning to arrange the sale after her parents’ sudden death six months before.
Since she hasn’t been able to find a will and with Poppy moving around and out of communication, Ann is able to get the court to establish her as the executor of the estate. When Ann finally reaches her, Poppy comes home to Milwaukee to help arrange the sale of the main family home and will join Ann in Wellfleet once the Milwaukee sale is finalized. The Prologue is written from Ann’s point of view, so her thoughts make it clear that she’s hiding Michael’s existence from both the realtor and the probate court. What we don’t know yet is why.
Part I is almost the whole first half of the book. The first chapter introduces us to the fact that it’s Michael’s first summer with the family, and Ann and Poppy spend the summer introducing him to the house, the beach, and the family’s summer traditions on Cape Cod. It is that first summer when Michael falls in love with the Cape.
The chapters that follow begin the following (disastrous) summer of 2000 when Ann and Michael are about 17 and Ann picks up a babysitting job with Anthony and Maureen Shaw. She also arranges for Michael to work with the Shaws landscaper for the summer. We follow the alternating perspectives of Ann, Poppy, and Michael who spend that summer in very different ways. Instead of spending all their time together as a family, Ann is babysitting, Poppy is embraced by the surfing community, and Michael learns the ropes of gardening and landscaping.
The book takes us through this last fateful summer that they spend together in Wellfleet before Part II begins with an article detailing their parents’ death 15 years later as they’re driving home from the Cape. We continue through the alternating perspectives, which now detail the distance and animosity between the three and carry us through to the end of their story.
Here’s what I loved about this book. Having never been to Cape Cod, I was still able to feel the beauty and appeal of the location because of the detail woven throughout the story. And each of the kids viewed it in a different way, revealing their distinct personalities. The reader is able to pick up on the similarities that made them close along with the differences that pull them apart.
The book has its happily ever after, but I couldn’t reconcile the situations outlined in the spoilers. They don’t make it a bad book. I just feel like they make it a not-great book.
Here’s what knocks it down to three stars for me.
***SPOILERS*** SPOILERS***SPOILERS***
I need to outline quite a few story details to explain what I didn’t like.
The summer that is detailed in the book is one in which Ann flirts with Anthony Shaw all summer, enjoying the attention of the older and successful man. He eventually creates a situation for them to become physical, and he rapes Ann when she realizes how wrong it is and says no. That evening, she sneaks into the house in search of Poppy for comfort, but when Ann discovers that Poppy isn’t home, she seeks out Michael. She doesn’t tell him what happened, but crawls into his bed just for company. When Ed and Connie discover Michael and Ann in the same bed, they immediately pack up the family and head back to Milwaukee.
Even though Ann and Michael insist that nothing happened between them (it didn’t), we don’t hear any ramifications of them being caught in the same bed. There isn’t any discussion with Ed and Connie. We just see Ann become more and more withdrawn because she discovers that she’s pregnant. She calls Anthony to tell him, he of course insists the baby is not his but then tells Ann to give him a week to think about it and hangs up on her.
The next thing we see is Anthony in Milwaukee approaching Michael and telling him that they need to talk. He tells Michael that Ann is pregnant, that he and Ann are in love, but that Ann wants Michael to say he is the baby’s father and leave town because admitting that Anthony is the father will ruin his life. In return, Anthony will give Michael $50,000 for himself and put another $50,000 in the bank so Ann will receive regular checks that look like they’re coming from Michael. If Michael doesn’t agree, Ann will get nothing. Anthony then proceeds to tell Ann that Michael overheard her telling Anthony she was pregnant and that Michael blackmailed him, saying that he would tell the Gordons he was the father if Anthony paid him to disappear. Anthony convinces Ann that he will make her life miserable and fight her for custody if she takes a paternity test.
Michael is resentful that Ann expected him to say he is the father. Ann is resentful that Michael blackmailed Anthony. Both of them were manipulated by a man who has everything to lose. Granted, they are young, and Anthony is in a position of authority, but neither of them had the faith in their parents to confide in them. The Gordons believe Michael when he leaves a message for them apologizing for what he did to Ann, but Ed and Connie never stop looking for him. They are confident that if they can find him, they can all get past what happened.
So….
Ed and Connie continue to go to Wellfleet every summer, even though the girls don’t join them. Michael, as it turns out, takes the money from Anthony and joins the landscaping business that he worked with that summer. He asks not to work in Wellfleet itself, but I find it very hard to believe that in a town that size, even with the summer residents, that Ed and Connie continued to look for Michael for 15 years and never discover that he had actually settled there.
The court system should have a record of Michael’s adoption, so even if they are unable to find him and assign Ann as the executor of the estate, Ann still shouldn’t be able to get a document stating that the title on the house is clear of other heirs. Additionally, the realtor is a former friend of Poppy’s. Wouldn’t she know that Poppy had an adopted brother?
After her parents’ death, Ann decides she is brave enough to confront Anthony for support for Noah, believing that their son should have the same opportunities that the boys she babysat for had. When Maureen answers the door, Ann discovers that the company Anthony worked for has gone out of business and Anthony is suffering from depression. When he realizes she is in his home, he gets angry and they end up arguing in front of Maureen about the rape. He eventually goes back upstairs and shoots himself. And then Maureen and Ann become close friends to the point where Maureen is willing to front Ann an insurance settlement to buy Michael’s share of the Wellfleet house. What?!?!
When Michael finally reunites with Poppy and Ann, Poppy is thrilled, but Ann wants nothing to do with him. Over time, they argue about selling the house or not. Eventually they find the will, which assigns ownership to the grandchildren. Ann assumes that the house will then go to Noah, not realizing that Michael has a daughter.
The court determines that Michael and Ann need to alternate residence in the home every two weeks, which seems completely unreasonable since Ann lives full-time in Boston. The two of them diligently swap residence every two weeks, seemingly to antagonize one another, and never talk about what happened the summer Michael disappeared and Noah was born. I understand family estrangements. I’m sure everyone has experienced something like that at one time or another, but I can’t help but feel that as close as the three siblings were for those two years, they would have talked about things when they found themselves all back in Wellfleet together, especially once Poppy actually finds out both sides of their stories.
Like I said, there is a happily ever after. The siblings come back together, Poppy settles down, Ann and Michael are building a business together and seem to be developing the romantic attraction they have always had for one another. Michael’s daughter Avery and Noah are described as acting like brother and sister. So a nice ending. I just didn’t think it was a 4- or 5-star read.
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