Review by Darcie Czajkowski
Geneva Novak
lives her life according to a non-negotiable list of rules, is dedicated to
maintaining order around her, and insists on solving problems methodically. According
to these philosophies, Geneva cares for animals as a veterinarian and runs her
household of two temperamental teenagers. As long as she doesn’t deviate, she
feels in control, but what troubles her is that some things – right now, too
many things – are out of her control.
Ella Novak
hates her mother. Well, what teenager doesn’t? But Ella hates hers more than
the average teenager. Her mother sticks her nose where it doesn’t belong,
ascribes to a long list of rules that’s become a nuisance, and doesn’t
understand Ella in the slightest. Being a teenager is hard enough when your
younger brother, Charlie, is up to no good, you’re trying to catch the
attention of a boy at school, and pursue your dream of writing poetry, all
while trying to keep up appearances that you’re studying for the SAT exam and
completing homework assignments on time. She certainly doesn’t need her mother
adding to her already-complicated life.
Helen Riley lives
with secrets. Darn good ones. Ones she’d prefer to forget, if only as a result
of her perma-companion, vodka. Her relationships with her four children are
icy, except her only son, Dublin, who tolerates her in small doses. But at
least she’s living in warm in L.A. and no one at her little condo complex
sniffs the odor on her breath or judges her for her past. Here, her secrets are
totally shrouded, locked in the past, where they will remain forever. She can
live with herself, just so long as her children don’t come lookin’ for answers.
Then Helen
makes a mistake. A big one. She drinks, then drives. Her car crashes and her
injuries include a fractured knee and leg, a broken nose, and a dislocated
shoulder. Despite her insistence that she can stay in her condo, Geneva and
Dublin agree that someone must care for her. But with Helen’s finances in
disarray, the duty falls on Geneva, whose husband, Tom, piously insists that taking
in Geneva’s mother is the right thing to do.
But will Tom
feel as committed to the cause once Helen moves in and aligns her nefarious interests
with Geneva’s son, Charlie’s? Will Helen find a way to keep drinking,
precluding any hope of a relationship with Geneva? Will Geneva pursue answers
to long-held questions from her childhood, including but not limited to why her
mother started drinking after her father’s death when Geneva was only eleven?
Told from
the viewpoints of Geneva, Ella, and Helen, this moving, complex story of family
engaged me from the first page until the very last. Sonja’s debut was
impressively woven together to accurately portray the layered dynamics of a
family which started dysfunctionally and only grew worse from there. Sonja
poses various questions: Can a family survive the damning effects of alcoholism
and long-kept secrets that created deep valleys between relationships? Are
there just some revelations that a family simply cannot surmount? For anyone
who has ever had a complicated relationship with one or more family members,
this book will speak to you. I highly recommend it.
Purchase the book at:
About the Author:
I'm a first-generation American, raised in Stowe, Vermont--a
wonderful place to be a child. My father taught skiing and tennis. My mother
had been a school teacher and encouraged my sister, my brother and me to read
and read and read. It stuck.
As a teenager, I waitressed at the Trapp Family Lodge to earn my
college tuition. Maria Von Trapp gave me a cuckoo clock for my sixteenth
birthday!
I earned my B.S. in Psychology at the University of Massachusetts
at Amherst, and my Ph.D. in Biological Psychology at the University of
California at Berkeley.
I started
writing full-time when my daughters were heading to college. My husband and I
recently moved from the San Francisco Bay Area (the setting for my debut novel)
to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.
Connect with the author at:
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