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A review by sbojo32
House on Fire by Bonnie Kistler
3.0
This book took awhile to get through. It was about 400 pages with small print, but it just wasn't gripping. I'm not sure if it was supposed to be or not, but after reading books such as A Nearly Normal Family and Miracle Creek I wanted a bit more. I loved the plot idea - a blended family of step-kids, a car accident where one ends up dying - was it the fault of her step-brother at the wheel, drunk, or not?
The book is written by a lawyer, but it doesn't come across as too legal. Rather, there is a good blend of the legalese alongside the story. There are a couple of flaws with this book, though. First, there is a side storyline with a priest that doesn't go anywhere. The other side storyline with the sheika also doesn't go anywhere. I'm not sure why they were brought in except to add to the page count. By the end I wanted them all to tie together, but the story didn't. The priest helped provide some snippets about death and grieving and lying which fit, but there was way too much real estate in the book dedicated to that storyline. The sheika one fit even less.
The end did seem rushed and got a little off the rails. I almost would have preferred an ambiguous ending in this case rather than how it ended, and I usually hate ambiguous endings!
The book is written by a lawyer, but it doesn't come across as too legal. Rather, there is a good blend of the legalese alongside the story. There are a couple of flaws with this book, though. First, there is a side storyline with a priest that doesn't go anywhere. The other side storyline with the sheika also doesn't go anywhere. I'm not sure why they were brought in except to add to the page count. By the end I wanted them all to tie together, but the story didn't. The priest helped provide some snippets about death and grieving and lying which fit, but there was way too much real estate in the book dedicated to that storyline. The sheika one fit even less.
The end did seem rushed and got a little off the rails. I almost would have preferred an ambiguous ending in this case rather than how it ended, and I usually hate ambiguous endings!