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A review by tinaha083
House on Fire by Bonnie Kistler
3.0
⭐️⭐️💫 What would you do if your beloved stepson was seemingly responsible for the death of your adored biological daughter?
— Leigh and Peter have the perfect blended family. Until one weekend, on their way home from a getaway, they’re informed that Peter’s son Kip has been arrested for driving drunk and crashing his truck into a tree. Chrissy was with him. Twelve hours later Chrissy is dead, and Kip is charged with manslaughter. Once tried, Kip says that it wasn’t him who was driving - it was Chrissy. Peter and Leigh are torn between their loyalty to each other and their loyalty to their children. Can their marriage survive? What really happened? —
That was a summary of the information from the book jacket. It all sounds amazing and really drew me to wanting to read this book. Unfortunately it completely went to pieces for me. There was potential for a great story here. An exploration of what loyalty means, of parents raising children and stepchildren, of how relationships work in blended families, of how families can be torn apart when lines are drawn and sides are taken. Of how your faith in your own children can be shaken by love for your stepchildren.
This story, on the other hand, while knowledgeable about trials and law, comes across as a textbook case and none of the depths are really explored. There are numerous subplots that didn’t make much sense and that, in the end, turned one story into a complicated, overwrought set of stories that have no credibility or believability. Characters behave in a way that feels completely false. There is rampant drug use and sexual overtones that just aren’t believable in light of the death of a family member. There is also a parental disconnect that I just did not understand. There were questions that never got asked, and behaviors that never got explained or corrected.
And that’s the main issue. Believability. There just isn’t a lot that happens in this story that is believable. Nobody behaves the way they should, the way real people would, or at least people of my acquaintance. At the end of the day, it was hard to get invested in the lives of people who were continually making decisions and then acting on them, when their information was sketchy at best. And a couple of the subplots, in particular, veered strongly off course and just derailed the story completely. It was never able to recover its footing.
This book is a definite page turner, and I read it in about 3.5 hours. But I found myself sorely disappointed by how it played out, and I was left wondering what the purpose was of what I’d just read. It just didn’t work for me.
My thanks to Netgalley and Atria Books for a free copy in exchange for my honest review.
— Leigh and Peter have the perfect blended family. Until one weekend, on their way home from a getaway, they’re informed that Peter’s son Kip has been arrested for driving drunk and crashing his truck into a tree. Chrissy was with him. Twelve hours later Chrissy is dead, and Kip is charged with manslaughter. Once tried, Kip says that it wasn’t him who was driving - it was Chrissy. Peter and Leigh are torn between their loyalty to each other and their loyalty to their children. Can their marriage survive? What really happened? —
That was a summary of the information from the book jacket. It all sounds amazing and really drew me to wanting to read this book. Unfortunately it completely went to pieces for me. There was potential for a great story here. An exploration of what loyalty means, of parents raising children and stepchildren, of how relationships work in blended families, of how families can be torn apart when lines are drawn and sides are taken. Of how your faith in your own children can be shaken by love for your stepchildren.
This story, on the other hand, while knowledgeable about trials and law, comes across as a textbook case and none of the depths are really explored. There are numerous subplots that didn’t make much sense and that, in the end, turned one story into a complicated, overwrought set of stories that have no credibility or believability. Characters behave in a way that feels completely false. There is rampant drug use and sexual overtones that just aren’t believable in light of the death of a family member. There is also a parental disconnect that I just did not understand. There were questions that never got asked, and behaviors that never got explained or corrected.
And that’s the main issue. Believability. There just isn’t a lot that happens in this story that is believable. Nobody behaves the way they should, the way real people would, or at least people of my acquaintance. At the end of the day, it was hard to get invested in the lives of people who were continually making decisions and then acting on them, when their information was sketchy at best. And a couple of the subplots, in particular, veered strongly off course and just derailed the story completely. It was never able to recover its footing.
This book is a definite page turner, and I read it in about 3.5 hours. But I found myself sorely disappointed by how it played out, and I was left wondering what the purpose was of what I’d just read. It just didn’t work for me.
My thanks to Netgalley and Atria Books for a free copy in exchange for my honest review.