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A review by marceelf
No Ordinary Life by Suzanne Redfearn
4.0
http://www.anurseandabook.com/2016/02/no-ordinary-life-by-suzanne-redfern.html
I finished this book in one day, it was pretty compulsively readable. Why? I have no idea.
Faye was the worst character. She literally just sat back and let everyone do whatever they wanted, to her and her children. I don't usually care too much what people do with their own lives, but when you aren't a tiger mom for your kids, that's when you lose me.
Faye has been abandoned months before by her long distance truck driver husband, but she hasn't done anything about it. She's not working, not paying the bills, not doing too much, so she ends up having to move to L.A. to live with her mom.
As she attempts to get a waitressing job, her four year old daughter is "discovered" by an agent. Suddenly, they are making a Gap commercial and spending the money. This leads to a part on a family television show. Faye isn't sure if she wants this, but she knows she needs the money, so after a few minutes of angst, she just goes along with the plan.
Faye says, "There are those who lead their lives, and those whose lives lead them, and I am the latter....". That is the perfect description of Faye's life, which drove me crazy! I wanted her to stand up and get it together as her family kept falling apart.
Then her son becomes involved in the show, which is a blessing for him, as he has been suffering from selective mutism. But as things get worse and worse with Faye's older daughter, and her ex-husband comes back into town looking for a big payday, Faye can't decide anymore if she wants this or not.
I think that is the thing about her that made me the craziest, it was back and forth all of the time.
SPOILER ALERT!!
The ending with her husband didn't seem very real - one minute he's saying he's back and she better get used to it because that money is his, and then he makes an abrupt about face and does the right (?) thing and walks away from the kids and money. That didn't make much sense.
I also didn't agree with how she got her daughter off the show. Making a very public accusation that a writer on a children's show is a pedophile, even when you know for a fact that it's not true, but you edit film to make it look like he's pulling a girl's shirt up instead of trying to pull it down, that's pretty low. His wife leaves him, the whole world thinks he's a child molester, and this doesn't seem to bother Faye at all. This is the woman who offers her missing husband apple pie because she knows it will make him happy, and she's suddenly so ruthless that she can ruin an innocent man's life.
And she doesn't consider how this will impact her son, who has only had positive experiences on the show. I'm just not buying it.
But none of this stopped me from staying up late to finish this book!! I couldn't put it down!
I finished this book in one day, it was pretty compulsively readable. Why? I have no idea.
Faye was the worst character. She literally just sat back and let everyone do whatever they wanted, to her and her children. I don't usually care too much what people do with their own lives, but when you aren't a tiger mom for your kids, that's when you lose me.
Faye has been abandoned months before by her long distance truck driver husband, but she hasn't done anything about it. She's not working, not paying the bills, not doing too much, so she ends up having to move to L.A. to live with her mom.
As she attempts to get a waitressing job, her four year old daughter is "discovered" by an agent. Suddenly, they are making a Gap commercial and spending the money. This leads to a part on a family television show. Faye isn't sure if she wants this, but she knows she needs the money, so after a few minutes of angst, she just goes along with the plan.
Faye says, "There are those who lead their lives, and those whose lives lead them, and I am the latter....". That is the perfect description of Faye's life, which drove me crazy! I wanted her to stand up and get it together as her family kept falling apart.
Then her son becomes involved in the show, which is a blessing for him, as he has been suffering from selective mutism. But as things get worse and worse with Faye's older daughter, and her ex-husband comes back into town looking for a big payday, Faye can't decide anymore if she wants this or not.
I think that is the thing about her that made me the craziest, it was back and forth all of the time.
SPOILER ALERT!!
The ending with her husband didn't seem very real - one minute he's saying he's back and she better get used to it because that money is his, and then he makes an abrupt about face and does the right (?) thing and walks away from the kids and money. That didn't make much sense.
I also didn't agree with how she got her daughter off the show. Making a very public accusation that a writer on a children's show is a pedophile, even when you know for a fact that it's not true, but you edit film to make it look like he's pulling a girl's shirt up instead of trying to pull it down, that's pretty low. His wife leaves him, the whole world thinks he's a child molester, and this doesn't seem to bother Faye at all. This is the woman who offers her missing husband apple pie because she knows it will make him happy, and she's suddenly so ruthless that she can ruin an innocent man's life.
And she doesn't consider how this will impact her son, who has only had positive experiences on the show. I'm just not buying it.
But none of this stopped me from staying up late to finish this book!! I couldn't put it down!