A review by scorpstar77
Second House from the Corner by Sadeqa Johnson

2.0

Felicia has almost just the life she always dreamed of - 3 kids, an amazing husband, an up-and-coming suburban life. She wants to get back to her acting career, and it seems like she might have some opportunities for coming her way. And then her first love gets out of prison and starts calling her, and her old best friend from back in the neighborhood starts blackmailing her with telling her husband about her past in order, and everything starts falling apart. She has to go home to Philly to start trying to piece things back together.

I...was not a fan. I didn't find the character motivations - or reactions - believable.
SpoilerI could not believe that a strong, independent, sassy woman like Felicia would have so little willpower that she couldn't tell the man who statutory raped her when she was 14, got her pregnant at 15, and ignored her after she got pregnant and had the baby to FUCK OFF and hang up the phone on him, from the start. That she was so terrified of telling her husband that she had a sexual relationship a decade before she even met him. That her husband got so furious about that fact that he kicked her out of the house and told her he couldn't trust her with his kids. That she couldn't keep herself from screwing the asshole who caused this shit in the first place. That the BIG SECRET kept from the reader until the end was just that the baby died.
I did LOVE her grandmother, and the flashbacks to her childhood that involved her mother. Seriously, Gran was an amazing character. And Felicia's very honest frustrations with being a mother - loving her kids to bits but wanting to murder them at least half the time - were refreshing. But I got so frustrated with basically everything else.