A review by krissysreading
What We Both Know by Fawn Parker

4.0

I initially was interested in this book because it was being compared to My Dark Vanessa, which is a novel that sicks with me to this day. I think having that comparison does a disservice to anyone reading this novel, and the novel itself. The focus is not so much on the crime or even the person who did irreparable damage to another human being. It is really an exploration of a person who was ignorant to events surrounding the lives of her family, and confronting those events later in life. Hillary gives up a lot in her life to take care of her aged father, who is going through dementia/alzheimer's . She agrees to ghost write his memoir, and in doing so goes through his past, and has the moral dilemma of how much to reveal. Whether to expose the terrible things he did or just enough to maintain his image.

The writing style of this book took some getting used to, but I ended up really connecting to Hillary's voice and point of view. If you would like to explore what it feels like to love and care for someone who is not worthy of it, I would highly recommend reading this novel.