I don't always love thrillers, but this one caught my interest and kept me reading for hours one day ... neglecting chores and refusing to cook dinner. It's a twined tale, told in two alternating voices, of Nina, the daughter of a grifter mom and Vanessa, born into a life of enormous privilege. Their lives intersect when they are both teens, and both come away from those years with a sense of having been terribly wronged by the other person's family. Years later, their lives intersect again.
What sets this book apart from some thrillers is the elegant, economical writing and the acute attention to the emotional life of the characters. These women are messy, ambivalent, troubled, and disillusioned, but they are also capable of reflection and growth. The themes running through are very current--the addictive quality of social media, the problems our young adults face when they get out of college with heaps of debt, and our desire for connecting meaningfully with new people when an identity is something that can be forged on the web. I think this book would please readers who loved THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN, but it would also satisfy readers who liked LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE and the Broadway musical WICKED. It is a tale of family dysfunction but also a story about women learning to be strong in the broken places.
No comments:
Post a Comment