📖 BOOK REVIEW⠀📚 Not a Happy Family
AUTHOR: Shari Lapena @sharilapena
Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books
Stars: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ + 🐰
Published: July 27, 2021
The Review 📚 Not a Happy Family
✨ The Title/Cover Draw:
- I had never read anything by Shari Lapena before. This book was chosen as a January read in one of the book clubs I am in as well as a Book of the Month (@bookofthemonth) selection in 2021.
💜 What I liked:
- This book was a smooth journey, revealing the details about a double murder and the possible motives of the people involved. It follows the trope of basic whodunit but it is so much more. There are no plot holes and the twists are pretty great. By the time you get to the end, you will wonder why you never saw it.
😱 What I didn’t like:
- As fabulous as the ending was, this was not as fast paced as I would have liked. However this is just a personal preference and the book really picked up in the last half.
🚦 My face at the end: 🤓
💭 4 Reasons to Read:
- 1. Family disfunction
- 2. Slow burn mystery
- 3. Double murder
- 4. A journey of discovery
🕧 Mini-Summary:
- The Merton family loses their parents to a double homicide. They all have motives, but is the killer outside of them, or within?
All thoughts and opinions are my own.
💯 For more details on the books we read, be sure to follow me on TikTok (@zaineylaney) or check out our Podcast – Elated Geek!
📘 Summary 📚 Not a Happy Family
In this family, everyone is keeping secrets–especially the dead. Brecken Hill in upstate New York is an expensive place to live. You have to be rich to have a house there. And they don’t come much richer than Fred and Sheila Merton. But even all their money can’t protect them when a killer comes to call. The Mertons are brutally murdered the night after an Easter Dinner with their three adult kids. Who, of course, are devastated.
Or are they? They each stand to inherit millions. They were never a happy family, thanks to their capricious father and neglectful mother, but perhaps one of them is more disturbed than anyone knew. Did one of them snap after that dreadful evening? Or was it someone else that night who crept in with the worst of intentions? It must be. After all, if one of your siblings was a psychopath, you’d know.