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A review by laurenreadslit
Every Kind of Wanting by Gina Frangello
2.0
This book actually gets off to an excellent start. It’s got all the components a dramatic familial novel needs: history, complicated relationships, characters that are just unlikeable enough to be relatable. Suddenly, though, so many things go wrong...and not just in the plot (that, at least, would make for an interesting read) but with the style, the narrative and the characterizations.
The chapters are titled for characters and I typically like when books are written this way, but the identity of the narrator was so unclear for so much of the book that it derailed the story. I found it hard to keep up with who was who and who felt which way about the other. There is also entirely too much going on. Two cheating husbands, two abusive fathers, two children with disabilities, one too many deaths and more family secrets than the reader needed.
Sometimes, an author can do such a great job of weaving all of these things together in a concise story that keeps the reader’s attention. Sometimes, an author doesn’t have to be concise at all in narrating a sweeping multi-generational family story (see: Pachinko or The Heart’s Invisible Furies) and the reader is still tuned in to every word, phrase, chapter. This was not either of those. There were three books worth of plot in this book and not enough time to tell it all, revelations suddenly flying at the reader when the clock was running out.
The chapters are titled for characters and I typically like when books are written this way, but the identity of the narrator was so unclear for so much of the book that it derailed the story. I found it hard to keep up with who was who and who felt which way about the other. There is also entirely too much going on. Two cheating husbands, two abusive fathers, two children with disabilities, one too many deaths and more family secrets than the reader needed.
Sometimes, an author can do such a great job of weaving all of these things together in a concise story that keeps the reader’s attention. Sometimes, an author doesn’t have to be concise at all in narrating a sweeping multi-generational family story (see: Pachinko or The Heart’s Invisible Furies) and the reader is still tuned in to every word, phrase, chapter. This was not either of those. There were three books worth of plot in this book and not enough time to tell it all, revelations suddenly flying at the reader when the clock was running out.