I am back with another Monday Reviews!
This week, I will be reviewing a book I received from Penguin Random House, The Truth According to Us by Annie Barrows. Thanks so much for the book, all opinions are my own.
Ok, so as always, let's start with synopsis!
Evoking the same small town charm with the same great eye for character, the co-author of Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Society finds her own voice in this debut novel about a young debutante working for the Federal Writer's Project whose arrival in Macedonia, West Virginia changes the course of history for a prominent family who has been sitting on a secret for decades.
The Romeyn family is a fixture in the town, their identity tied to its knotty history. Layla enters their lives and lights a match to the family veneer and a truth comes to light that will change each of their lives forever.
Ok, so this book. Well, it was good, and (surprisingly) I enjoyed it. It was out of my usual reading comfort zone, it wasn't young adult, it wasn't a romance or dystopian story, it was fairly historical. In fact, I can thank my grade 12 social studies teacher for teaching me what a bourgeoisie and proletariat were. There is a lot of talk of Communist takeover in the time this book takes place, the early to late stages of the Depression in a small southern town.
Because it was so outside my comfort zone, within the first 50 or so pages, I was debating giving up, because I wasn't sure if I could go on. I had trouble initially getting to this book, plus, its over 500 pages, a huge commitment! In the end, I did push through, and I'm glad I did.
This book was a little out of my comfort zone, as I said, but I liked it. It reminded me a bit of To Kill a Mockingbird, not in the plot/prejudice sense, but it was set in a small southern town where everyone knows everyone and the main narrator is a 9 year old girl who doesn't understand or really know the secrets of her family.
I will say, if you are looking for another Atticus Finch, you won't find it in Felix Romeyn. He's a sly womanizing "businessman" who holds an 18 year old grudge and uses this circumstance and those events to convince his sister to living with him and care for his two girls, after his divorce instead of living her dreams.
Overall, I thought this was a good book and recommend it to anyone who wants a twisted TKaM or just a good ole book about family lies and deceit!