Review first published on my blog: http://memoriesfrombooks.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-truth-about-you.html
The Truth About You is a story of Lainey Hollingworth - wife, mother, daughter, friend. She is the caretaker of her family. Her husband Tom is a well know author. Her adoptive father Peter suffers from Alzheimer's and lives with Tom and Lainey. Managing their lives and the lives of her two children and her stepson is how Lainey spends her time.
A mystery exists in Lainey's past - a mystery about her biological father. Lainey knows she was born in Italy, but her mother fled when Lainey was a baby. During her life, her mother refused to reveal more. So, one summer, Lainey takes her family to Italy to discover her roots. She finds that and so much more that shakes the core of her world.
The cover of this books is deceptively pretty and wholesome - a lovely young girl walking through a field of flowers. The description of the book sounds like the makings of a good story. Unfortunately, the book itself goes in a completely different direction. In Lainey's Italian summer, some of the things that come up are - infidelity, illegitimate children, abandonment, unplanned pregnancies, rape, incest, pornography, and a "Fifty Shades of Grey" relationship. The book includes not one or two of these things in the story, but every single one.
In addition, Lainey's character ends up unlikable. It starts within the first few pages of the book as the reader learns that she had a relationship with Tom when he was still married to another woman and the father of a young child. "She should have walked away the minute she'd found out .... Instead she'd let him leave Emma and his five-year-old son in order to start a new life with her." That where it starts and proceeds from there in a direction that is not for me.
*** Reviewed for GoodReads First Reads program ***
The Truth About You is a story of Lainey Hollingworth - wife, mother, daughter, friend. She is the caretaker of her family. Her husband Tom is a well know author. Her adoptive father Peter suffers from Alzheimer's and lives with Tom and Lainey. Managing their lives and the lives of her two children and her stepson is how Lainey spends her time.
A mystery exists in Lainey's past - a mystery about her biological father. Lainey knows she was born in Italy, but her mother fled when Lainey was a baby. During her life, her mother refused to reveal more. So, one summer, Lainey takes her family to Italy to discover her roots. She finds that and so much more that shakes the core of her world.
The cover of this books is deceptively pretty and wholesome - a lovely young girl walking through a field of flowers. The description of the book sounds like the makings of a good story. Unfortunately, the book itself goes in a completely different direction. In Lainey's Italian summer, some of the things that come up are - infidelity, illegitimate children, abandonment, unplanned pregnancies, rape, incest, pornography, and a "Fifty Shades of Grey" relationship. The book includes not one or two of these things in the story, but every single one.
In addition, Lainey's character ends up unlikable. It starts within the first few pages of the book as the reader learns that she had a relationship with Tom when he was still married to another woman and the father of a young child. "She should have walked away the minute she'd found out .... Instead she'd let him leave Emma and his five-year-old son in order to start a new life with her." That where it starts and proceeds from there in a direction that is not for me.
*** Reviewed for GoodReads First Reads program ***
