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A review by crystalstarrlight
Home Front by Kristin Hannah
Did not finish book. Stopped at 16%.
Bullet Review:
DNF at 16% or start of Chapter 18.
This book is HUGELY offensive. Offensive to military families. Offensive to women. Offensive to people who like good writing and characters.
But it was this line that made me ragequit:
"What kind of mother could leave her children?"
WHAT KIND OF DAD puts his JOB over his family??! OHHHHHH but THAT is okay because kids need moms not dad?!!!! F$&@ that sh!t - I needed my dad as much as my mom!!
I also seriously wonder how much research was done on the US Army, because there is no such thing as telling the Army you cannot go on deployment - that's a dishonorable discharge. If Michael had been married to an Army woman, he should know that - I knew that and I was a CHILD for my dad's Navy career!
DO NOT BUY.
Full Review:
Jolene was the child of alcoholic parents with an abusive father. Her parents die when she is 3 months shy of 18; she ends up going to Michael Zarkades, a local lawyer, to avoid being in the foster care system, and, when her case is done, promises to meet him when she gets older (does anyone else find this creepy?). Because she has little other options, she joins the Army and becomes a helicopter pilot. But after she and Michael get married and have Betsy, she goes into the Army National Guard to be able to be home with the family.
Fast forward to Jolene's 41st birthday. She's learned to be hard as steel and cool as ice; her husband, Michael, is addicted to work and doesn't like how Jolene is in the military and is so independent and steely. She has abratty teenager named Betsy and an oddly cherubic 4-year old named Lulu along with her token Native American friend, Tami. Michael is the type of husband and father typical in your average 90's media who forgets her birthday, comes home super late, doesn't attend his kids events, all because he's working so gosh darn much.
This all changes on the day she learns she will be deployed. Michael is astonished and even though he's been a military husband for 12+ years, he's like, "Can't you just say no?!" You see, Michael doesn't approve of the war or of her being in the military, even though Jolene is happy, so he's actively hostile anytime she even remotely brings it up including when she hangs out with her coworkers.
(I had a line here where I essentially said "What adult does that?" but I'm editing this in 2024, so I could actually imagine this happening now)
The point whereupon I ragequit was when he said,
"What kind of mother leaves her children?"
Okay, so this is yet another book where the mother is expecting to sacrifice her entire life, all the things she enjoys for her family, her spouse and kids, but the father is never expecting to do the bare minimum. Gotcha.
Let me turn this question around -
DNF at 16% or start of Chapter 18.
This book is HUGELY offensive. Offensive to military families. Offensive to women. Offensive to people who like good writing and characters.
But it was this line that made me ragequit:
"What kind of mother could leave her children?"
WHAT KIND OF DAD puts his JOB over his family??! OHHHHHH but THAT is okay because kids need moms not dad?!!!! F$&@ that sh!t - I needed my dad as much as my mom!!
I also seriously wonder how much research was done on the US Army, because there is no such thing as telling the Army you cannot go on deployment - that's a dishonorable discharge. If Michael had been married to an Army woman, he should know that - I knew that and I was a CHILD for my dad's Navy career!
DO NOT BUY.
Full Review:
Jolene was the child of alcoholic parents with an abusive father. Her parents die when she is 3 months shy of 18; she ends up going to Michael Zarkades, a local lawyer, to avoid being in the foster care system, and, when her case is done, promises to meet him when she gets older (does anyone else find this creepy?). Because she has little other options, she joins the Army and becomes a helicopter pilot. But after she and Michael get married and have Betsy, she goes into the Army National Guard to be able to be home with the family.
Fast forward to Jolene's 41st birthday. She's learned to be hard as steel and cool as ice; her husband, Michael, is addicted to work and doesn't like how Jolene is in the military and is so independent and steely. She has a
This all changes on the day she learns she will be deployed. Michael is astonished and even though he's been a military husband for 12+ years, he's like, "Can't you just say no?!" You see, Michael doesn't approve of the war or of her being in the military, even though Jolene is happy, so he's actively hostile anytime she even remotely brings it up including when she hangs out with her coworkers.
(I had a line here where I essentially said "What adult does that?" but I'm editing this in 2024, so I could actually imagine this happening now)
The point whereupon I ragequit was when he said,
"What kind of mother leaves her children?"
Okay, so this is yet another book where the mother is expecting to sacrifice her entire life, all the things she enjoys for her family, her spouse and kids, but the father is never expecting to do the bare minimum. Gotcha.
Let me turn this question around -
- What kind of FATHER forgets his daughter's track meet
- What kind of HUSBAND forgets his wife's birthday?
- What kind of HUSBAND buys his wife something she does not want?
- What king of FATHER that is constantly late coming home, is emotionally distant, is a self-centered prick, who leaves all the parenting to his wife and won't demand his children treat their mother with respect?!
I guess that's okay, because men are men and women are just supposed to not have lives outside their kids!
I did skip to the end and read the last chapter and the Epilogue and that made me doubly glad I didn't bother to read this in its entirety.
To understand why I'm rating this 1-star, let me give you some of my history. I am a proud Navy brat; my dad was in the Navy for 21 years. He went on multiple deployments - and yes, I was upset, but my mom never let us dwell on it, instead having us focus on being supportive of him in the trying time (there wasn't anything we could do anyway). In the middle of one of his standard 6-month deployment, for 2 months we received absolutely no word from him and were worried sick about him. And after 9/11, I was concerned that, although Dad was retired, he would be called into active duty. I even contemplated joining ROTC after high school.
So I have some limited experience with military families - and I am appalled at the way Jolene and Michael's family acts in this book. Being a family is tough, a military family doubly so (since you have a member gone for months at a time in dangerous locations), but many families took up the challenges and didn't act anything like Michael and Jolene. Sure, there were many divorces in the military - many spouses could not deal with their loved one gone so much and said goodbye. But I'm surprised, if Michael is such an anti-war, anti-military guy 1) he married Jolene at all (it's absolutely creepy and feels terribly ethically wrong that he married the client he helped when she was 17) and 2) he stayed married to her half as long as he did! How did they manage over a decade of marriage?! If he hates her career so much, how did that not aggravate their relationship say 5 years in or 10 years in?! What does he do when she leaves on the weekends or the 2 weeks in the summer?
Michael is a horrible person - a workaholic, pouty, unsupportive - but Jolene is a mystery. On one hand, she's tough and demands everything her way - but then Michael certainly isn't doing any parenting, so the problem is?? Also I find it hard to believe that a woman as tough as Jolene supposedly is would let her family walk all over her - to let Michael forget her birthday (I envision a strong woman would be filing divorce papers) or her child call her "braindead" (more about that in a bit). In short, Jolene is a very inconsistent character.
When combined, both Michael and Jolene have the problem of being unable to just sit down and TALK about things. Enter Big Misunderstanding. Again, you would assume after 10+ years of marriage, they would have figured out the importance of communication or divorce - but nope, neither of them knows how to use a phone or open their mouths.
As for the children - let me just say, if I said or did even 1/10th of the things Betsy did, I would be picking myself off the floor. At one point, Betsy calls her mom "Braindead" - if I had said that to MY mom, I would have been in deep sh!t!! Also, Betsy freaks out when her mom is deployed (how does a military kid NOT expect that at some point?!) and threatens to not love her mom anymore if she leaves (again, what??!). As for Betsy's humiliation over her mom's career, I'm mystified. I was PROUD of my dad being in the military. I STILL am proud. And most people around me never picked on me for my dad being in the military - most of the time I got the opposite reaction!
If Betsy is a terrible character for being seemingly shallow and badly written, Lulu is terrible in a different vein. Lulu wasn't as terrible a person, claiming to withhold love from her mom; instead, she was the type of child that exists in our minds, a "real-life" sweet Shirley Temple, "sweet and cute and cherubic" that wants nothing more than to cuddle and hug and be a darling. The salt from Betsy was bad, but saccharine from Lulu is chewing through my stomach.
And then Tami. Her entire character is being Jolene's friend, a token Native American (no mention of what tribe she's from, only that she has long black hair and high cheekbones), a pilot, and someone to tell Jolene "It will get better". (Her husband Carl cheated on her, and it was sad but now it's totes not! And they are now totes better!) The sad part is - she's not a character. She's a cardboard cutout. Making her Native American was just like putting a costume on a dolly - it was cheap and lame and I'm insulted for our Indigenous population.
Once I got done being angry at the horrible, stupid characters, I realized I knew what made me maddest - this isn't really a story about redemption. It's one of those books where the focus is on how awful the author can make things before Deus Ex Machina-ing the sh!t out of it to make life perfect again. I don't mind bad things happening, but I'd like to see more than a couple of paragraphs on how amazing life suddenly got overnight after wading through 90% of a book of misery.
I skipped through from chapter 8 to the end, reading the final chapter and the Epilogue, and each page was rife with "this horrible thing happened" or "Jolene drank more wine" or "Jolene took sleeping pills". But then magically, she's fine; she's suddenly having sex with her husband again (there's a gross line where they hint at it in front of their children), she FINALLY goes to see a therapist in the final chapter, and what they discuss is glossed over. Basically, this book is "hurt/comfort" fic, with emphasis on the "hurt" but no real analysis of the healing.
So that's why I quit the book. It was cliched and boring, with the most immature writing and plot structure. It gave no nuance to characters, it reveled in making things horrible for Jolene so we can all feel better that our lives aren't that bad. But it's also incredibly insulting to the many military families who act nothing like the Michael's and Betsy's in this book.
I tend not to give sweeping recommendations, as all people are different, but I personally do not recommend.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Drug abuse, Alcohol, War