Domestic drama that illustrates just what can happen when adults are not paying attention to what is going on with their children. The evil might not come from the outside...
A close circle develops around Sunday tutoring when a stay-at-home mom starts giving special help to children who have dyslexia. Eve (married to Eric) comes from money and has a lovely home complete with woods, pond and donkeys. She loves cooking and allows her own children (Poppy, Sorrel and baby Ash) a lot of freedom to run around the property secure in the safety of her life. The children who come on Sunday quickly become tight knit while their parents drift in and out of Eve's home. There's Paul and Melissa, he's an architect and she's a designer, and their daughter, Izzy. Novelist Martin is married to Grace who works to support the family while he attempts to write, and their two children Charley and Blake. While the adults are absorbed with themselves and each other, the children are left to their own devices. And that benign neglect leads to tragedy. Someone should have been watching the kids. NO SPOILERS.
I found this to be intriguing at first and then maddening as it became obvious what was going on. There were a lot of characters to get to know and different points of view in the narration to adjust to, but I never really related to any of them. The children needed supervising, that was obvious, and the parents kept on blithely getting drunk, forming illicit relationships, or just not paying attention. I couldn't understand why no one was taking care of them, asking them questions, being more observant. It mystified me how the truth could go unnoticed for so long. I like suspenseful thrillers and I might have quit reading had I not agreed to write a review and also having a compulsion to finish every book I start. I wanted to like it more than I did and the vague ending left me a bit unsettled.
Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins for this e-book ARC to read and review.
This is a standalone and is not part of any series.
Genre - domestic drama, marital abuse, tragedy
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