This book was a hard read. It would be 5 stars but I guessed the ending. I wanted more from the teen characters but overall a great representation of the difficulties of high school, family separation and being LGBTIQ parent.

A keenly observed suburban drama, set around a school in a small town outside Newcastle. The characters come from all walks of life and are all facing their various challenges as best they can.

Little do they know the secrets they hide or how interconnected their troubles will turn out to be

Wry and emotional, covering a number of difficult themes, including sexual violence.

Having read a couple of this authors books before (Exquisite and The Home) and enjoyed them I was looking forward to this one, but unfortunately I have to say I was a little disappointed. Lots of gossip and tittle-tattle centred around a small town school, some strong characters and a couple of giggly moments but overall a bit dull.

This was what happened when you got too involved in other people’s lives.

Honestly? I was very happily and pleasantly surprised by this. The more I think about it, the more this seems like a book that wouldn't have worked for me, or at least a book that I'd have very mixed feelings about. It's a contemporary family drama that gets a little dark, following a group of characters in a small town, focusing a lot on school politics, the dynamics of motherhood, interactions of people from different classes, rape culture and misogyny. I don't tend to like dramas, and while I like mess, I like a particular type of mess that this did not seem to be. This has a lot of secrets and gossip and angst and the like.

But I still ended up liking it very much. At the centre of it is the new lesbian relationship that has scandalised this small town, and while they had their ups and downs, I really really liked Erin and Rachel together, their joy in each other and their later in life revelations. They were flawed people, like everyone else in the cast, and I ended up really loving the almost slice of life feel of this. There's a teensy mystery aspect, maybe, but really, the book just puts a microscope on these five women and the people surrounding them for a few months, and shows how all their complicated relationships play out. Some people change a lot over the course of the book, and some people change very little. In another book, that's something I might have been very frustrated with, especially with the way things turned out for some characters, but it just seemed really fitting in this story. This is a book that COULD have been written to be a thriller, but I'm so glad it wasn't. This didn't need a bunch of silly twists and reveals -- though technically, there ARE twists and reveals. But they're not written in the thriller style, and it was just really satisfying to me.

Some spoilery thoughts.

Spoiler

I didn't predict that the book would move in the directions that it did with sexual assault and misogyny, but I didn't mind it, and I liked the way it was treated. It's saying things that have been said before, but it's the characters that really made this really impactful. Luke's casual and unthinking violence was so real and awful. And Laura, as frustrating and hateful as she could be, was still a character that clawed at my heart. I'll always have a soft spot for characters for whom motherhood isn't easy/bliss. It breaks my heart that she tries to hard for Max, and in the end it's not enough. And it's really believable that in the end, she's still as homophobic as ever, just as Rachel is still as patronising as ever. It's so sad, that if Rachel had known how she would have affected Laura's life, she'd have probably wanted to help or do things differently, but she didn't know! :( Gutting.

Ah well. I'm still really happy about the middle aged gays and their happy ending, lol.

Listened to the audiobook as read by Elaine Claxton, a new to me narrator whom I liked so much. This was really skillfully rendered. I'm excited to try more from Stovell. The first book I read from her was a thriller I actually really liked, which is impressive for me. I'll be glad to read her in any genre.

Content warning:

Spoiler

sexual assault, asphyxiation, homophobia

3.5 stars