About book The Winters In Bloom [With Earbuds] (2011)
I hate writing negative reviews but in this case I can't help it. I was really looking forward to reading this book. The premise of this story was good with a child, Michael who disappears from his own backyard. The suspicion is he has been abducted. Yes, another one. I seem to have read a few on this vein lately. Maybe that was part of the problem. But I don’t think so. So many times I nearly gave up on this book. In the end I wished I had. Sheer stubbornness kept me reading but I admit to skimming, largely because I found the story never grabbed me as I had expected it would. What was the problem? Firstly the characters, Michael's parents, Kyra and David nearly drove me to distraction with their obsessive over protective behaviour. Yes, the author tries to give good reasons for it from their past but it never convinced me. I found them annoying. Add to that Courtney, David’s ex wife and Amy, Kyra’s older sister who both feature as background stories are filled in and I felt like I was surrounded by a case of characters that I didn't. The characters all seemed to have certain sameness about them. They never felt real. I also found the style of writing lack something as it jumped around. Though I have liked others of this author’s book, which was initially why I picked this up, my advice on this one is not to bother. Ah, yes... another novel in which a child is homeschooled because his parents are hyper-vigilant, distressingly paranoid, over-protective helicopter parents who refuse him appropriate socialization, much less any kind of stimulation outside the confines of his own house.In this book, however, homeschooling is mostly a conceit that offers more background explanation, a chance for exposition, and evidence of the parents' fatal flaw as parents. It's presented stereotypically, with the parents as archetypes--annoying, but of so little importance to the plot that I can't even say much about the negative connotations of the depiction, other than to say, "Homeschooling presented as an excuse to shelter children into stupefication--how original. Not!". Other than that, the book is an easy read for a week of following the kids around to their various activities--easy to put down, but easy to pick up again when I find myself at the playground, or on the bleachers outside the ice rink. The subplots tend to have much more emotional impact than the main plot, which is odd, but the gradual tying together of all of them as the book paces towards its conclusion is satisfying, and Tucker is so fond of unhappily-ever-after-ish books, in which things turn out okay only mostly, that if you've read more than a couple of her works then you'll find the ending of this book happier than you've been bracing yourself for.
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This story makes you realize that your family may not be as messed up as you thought.
—Debbie
Lisa is one of my favorite authors. Thanks for dealing with complex family issues.
—Shawn
