Format: ebook
Release Date: August 1st, 2022
Age: Adult
Genre: Contemporary
Goodreads
Rating: 2/5 Stars
I’ll put my hands up straight away and admit this wasn’t for me. It was a book I grabbed quite a while ago from ‘Amazon First Reads’, and as such I’ve been meaning to read it for a fair while. It came up on my Reading Challenges, so I dove in – though I admit I can’t remember why I picked it for this one, and the only relationships that made me uncomfortable were the ones that involved Goldie, Lena’s ex-husband and the father to Maya and Sameer.
This book revolves around those three – Lena, who after her divorce from Goldie married a Mexican man, making them the subject of gossip in the community, Maya, previously divorced and now engaged to Veer Kapoor, the son of a billionaire and one of Lena’s oldest friends, and Sameer, who at the start of the book is involved in a drink driving accident, setting off a chain of events for the whole family.
Part of the reason this didn’t hook me was I found the characters difficult to connect with. Largely because all the POV characters seem highly judgemental of one another, Lena’s weight is mentioned consistently, and there’s the sense quite often that the characters aren’t actually learning and growing, until they experience some huge crisis that forces them to adjust their POV. It also felt a bit soap opera-ish – not in the US sense, but more in the way Eastenders constantly piles on tragedy after tragedy after tragedy. Of course conflict can be a good thing in books, but so much of this felt like it was just piled on for the sake of it.
I think this boils down to I tried something a bit different that I didn’t gel with, but I know there are others who will find themselves really enjoying this and getting on with it much better. It is really well written, and there’s a lot Judge is conveying through the story of this one small family. I think I just personally wasn’t a huge fan of the characters or the constant bad circumstances they found themselves in, but as mentioned before this is going to land much better for other readers.
Reading Challenge
2023 Tarot Reading Challenge
Prompt: The Empress Reversed – a book featuring a relationship that makes you uncomfortable
Progress: 10/164 Completed
Unwrapping Words 