I’ve enjoyed some other novels by this author, and I felt potential in this one, too, but too often the way this one unfolded proved more frustrating than entertaining. Also I never love it when a holiday is featured in the title while playing a less than minor role in the story.
Right from the start, the reader has to buy into some convoluted circumstances. Single mom April agrees to live/work very closely with a guy whose real name she hasn’t been given, so wouldn’t you look into the situation more first, especially when a stranger would be around your kids? Turns out the guy is the father of her twins only he doesn’t know it. And she moved back to their gossipy small town somehow thinking he wouldn’t find out?
Everything about that setup felt convenient, but at such an early point in the story I was willing to go with it since I figured okay, soon Frank will demand a DNA test and we’ll get into the drama of what happens next. Only for the majority of the story, April thinks about telling Frank and always finds excuses not to, which I guess thinking about it, is at least more proactive than Frank who doesn’t even come close to asking if they’re his kids.
Very early we’re told Frank thinks April cheated on him. He was told this by people he considers unreliable yet remains adament that she cheated and therefore he couldn’t be the dad even though he clearly could be and almost everyone else April crosses paths with suspects he is. So Frank spends much of this book seeming like he isn’t all that bright or like he’s unwilling to accept responsibility, either way, not attractive.
I struggled with April, too. When Frank was twenty-five years old he had sex with an eighteen year old April (before they found religion), shortly after he ghosts her, she ends up alone, financially strapped, raising his kids and for that, I wanted her to express a little more anger towards him, and expect more of an apology from him, instead she goes so easy on the guy that she sort of seems like a doormat.
These are two extraordinarily passive and uncommunicative main characters, which yes, there are people in the real world who behave that way, but their inaction isn’t nearly as engaging as this might have been had they from the jump confronted one another and from there we’d seen Frank try to bond with his kids and this former couple attempt to co-parent and see the two of them reckon with how each had wronged the other, but the way this story played out there was little time left in the end to dig into any of that juicy fallout.
Looking at the ratings on this one, clearly there are readers out there who find a big secret is plenty to hang a story on, if you think that would work for you, too, then maybe you’ll love this book, for me though, there’s just so much more drama and emotion in revealing a secret than there is in holding on to it well past the point of believability.