Thursday, October 23, 2014

Before You Know Kindness by Chris Bohjalian (audio)

★★
"Sara knew that behind its locked front door no home was routine.  Not the house of her childhood, not the apartment of her husband's, not the world they were building together with Willow and Patrick.  All households had their mysteries, their particular forms of dysfunction."

While on the annual summer trip to his mother's, Spencer McCullough is shot is accidentally shot in the shoulder by his twelve-year-old daughter, Charlotte.  What unfolds is a more complex story then anyone first thought.  And thrown in, are even more complex issues of animal rights.

Eh, I didn't really enjoy this book at all.  I didn't like any of the characters, and frankly, all of the animal rights and lawsuits aspects just annoyed me to no end.  Luckily I listened to it as an audio book, so it at least did help pass the time at work.  I now officially have a love/hate relationship with Chris Bohjalian.  I absolutely LOVED The Sandcastle GirlsThe Light in Ruins was really good too and The Night Strangers and Skeletons at the Feast weren't bad either.  But his more "contemporary" novels I can hardly get through.  Many it's the fact that I tend to enjoy historical fiction and care more about a story, but they almost seem to be written by different authors.  That's the big thing I missed in this book - there wasn't a really climax (at least not that I cared enough about) and then ending just seemed very insignificant.  I want to read another "Sandcastle Girls!" We'll see how "Midwives" turns out - the last of my Chris Bohjalian audiobooks.


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