I almost gave this a 5, hesitating only because the ending was abrupt. I'm not sure why people either seem to love this book or hate it. I was immediately drawn in. A respected local teacher stops a school shooting and becomes even more beloved. He's later accused of terrible crimes, against students, and you follow the family as they work through their own issues, trying to keep their relationships going, even while wondering if George had committed the acts of which he's accused. This would be great for book clubs, and I am certainly going to keep watch on the author. count me as one who loved it. Thank you to Net Galley and Random House Publishing/Ballantine for an e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Like a train wreck in a good way, you want to look away or stop reading but you can’t.

I keep thinking about this book. Great story, memorable characters, kept me guessing (although most do – I’m horrible at figuring out the mystery in a mystery!) So, why do I have such mixed feelings about it?

I hadn’t read anything by Zoe Whittall, although she has written award-winning “literary fiction”…but I liked the description of The Best Kind of People, and appreciate the chance to receive an advance copy from Random House and NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

Here’s the outline: the Woodbury family live a privileged life in an affluent suburb (named Avalon Hills, Connecticut...but think Greenwich). The patriarch, George, teaches science at the local prep school, and is regarded as a hero because he once stopped a gunman from shooting up the school. His wife, Joan, is a hardworking ER nurse, described as “…under five foot two with the practical haircut of every nurse on the trauma ward…blended into the faceless mass of small-town life.” They have two children: Sadie, a student at the school where George teaches, and Andrew, who is an attorney living with his partner in Manhattan (where he escaped the homophobic environment in Avalon Hills). Sadie has spent “…years she’d wished she could just get over the awkward, in-between feeling of being a teenaged girl, the feeling of being ugly in the body that is probably the most beautiful you will eve have.” The parents are described as “…the academic sort, floating brains in denial of the body.”

One night the quiet at their expansive home is broken when a police car pulls up and George is charged with sexual misconduct with girls from the prep school when he was a chaperone on a ski trip. —with students from his daughter’s school. Sadie, who has enjoyed status as a smart and popular high school senior, becomes a social outcast. Andrew returns home to support the family, and finds he has to confront unhappy memories. A men’s rights activist group gets involved and attempts to recruit Sadie for their cause. So there’s a lot going on!

I like the way the story demonstrates the way that “perfect” families in “perfect” towns aren’t always what they seem, and how fragile relationships can be, especially when unpleasant truths about relationships are revealed. There is a lot to ponder as Whittall explores issues of trust, love, and rape culture.

So, why the mixed feelings? I ABSOLUTELY HATED THE ENDING. And I mean the very ending…the final paragraph. But I still give it five stars because maybe it’s just me, and it was a good read and it made me think.

George and Joan seemingly have everything. Although George comes from old money, his reputation as a schoolteacher is what really matters to his family and the town.
After a skiing school trip where George is a chaperone, his reputation is tarnished by a group of young girls. Can an entire life be ruined by a group of tweens who may not be telling the truth?
Joan and his children must try to decipher the truth.
Although this book is solidly in the genre of "do we really know our spouse" I found myself caring about the characters. Although I wish this novel ended a bit more ambiguously, I definitely would recommend it.
Find my review on Amazon "The Book Lady Reads."

Of course, when your loved one is accused of a heinous crime, you believe he's being set up...right? George Woodbury was always known for his family's wealth, until he stopped an armed gunman from shooting up a school, then he was known as town hero and Teacher of the Year umpteen years running. But when he's accused of various sexual misconduct with a minor charges, his reputation is questioned and his family is forced to look closer at their hero than they'd ever looked before.
A fascinating peek into the lives of a family dealing with the unthinkable, and a jarring depiction of how a person's struggles could amplify and explode in times of crisis.

I was really excited to read this book because the description sounded great and the first few chapters were really interesting. But then the unlikable characters and boring story line were overwhelming. I ended up not caring if George was guilty or innocent because I didn't know him at all as a character.

Books like this are why I generally stay far away from “literary” novels, even award-winning ones like this one. The dialogue is awful, the overall tone is incredibly pretentious, and the novel is shooting for some kind of meaningful human experience type theme but fails spectacularly.

The premise of the novel is an intriguing one: a well-respected white man in a tight-knit wealthy community is accused of rape. The novel deals with the fallout of this accusation along with its effects on the accused George’s wife Joan, his children Sadie and Andrew, and the community. I love stories like this, which is why I was drawn to the novel. While it was a compelling read (in the sense that it was a page-turner), it wasn’t very good.

First and main issue: the dialogue. How is it that I’ve literally read obscure high fantasy works with dialogue more realistic than the one in this book? The dialogue is awful. Unrealistic is too weak a word. It’s stilted and robotic and like nothing any actual human person would ever say. Worse, at times I felt like I was being preached at, like the author was using her characters to have highfalutin intellectual debates on morality and the law. It felt like I was reading the rough draft of someone’s undergraduate thesis. I cannot count the number of times I rolled my eyes at the words coming out of these characters’ mouths. It was wildly banal and unsophisticated, like the author just wanted to cram every timely and controversial issue into the novel. Unfortunately, none of the thorny topics she brings up are ever really discussed properly or given the depth and breadth they deserve. And this is all in the dialogue, which means nearly every time a character spoke I was jarred out of reality. This was seriously a huge problem, and I don’t understand how an editor let slip this horrifically wooden dialogue.

Second issue: the characters. The author kept telling us things about them and their personalities but didn’t really show us anything. For example, we were told multiple times that Joan, the wife of the accused, is a strong, controlling leader, but I don’t think I saw a single example of this in the entire book. I couldn’t get a handle on any of them, which is a problem when you have a novel built on the notion of an accusation shattering a tight-knit community. I saw no evidence of any sort of community here. I mean, for God’s sake, one of the girls bringing forth accusations is the sister of Sadie’s best friend! Where is the confrontation between this girl’s parents and Joan? Where is the outrage? In fact, where are the family’s friends in this supposedly small, tight-knit community?

We’re constantly told things happening but are never shown these things, which means a lot of the payoff you would expect with a plotline like this is gone. Case in point: when Joan finds out about something from her husband’s past that all but proves he is guilty, I kept waiting for the explosive confrontation between her and George, but instead…nothing. The scene where Joan tells him she knows, George is literally unable to speak due to an injury, which leads to the whole thing being wildly anti-climactic.

Another issue I had is regarding Andrew, George’s son, who is gay. Apparently, when Andrew was seventeen he was involved in a sexual relationship with his twenty-something coach. I’m not quite sure what the author was getting at here. I think the intention was to show that Andrew is in fact more damaged by this relationship than he or anyone realizes, but in this particular case a little telling may have helped. Or perhaps it’s meant to be intentionally ambiguous? Whatever the case, the way this relationship is implied to be somehow less morally repugnant because it’s between two gay men rubbed me the wrong way and made me think of how queer relationships are always inherently sexualized. Something else that got under my skin was the frequent discussions of how many teens have highly sexual lives and in fact pursue adults and not the other way around – what didn’t get nearly enough emphasis was that adults are supposed to have impulse control and turn children away. Like, Andrews’s coach talks about how Andrew pursued him and that’s why he gave in, but like…as an adult you’re supposed to be the responsible one in this situation. That’s kind of the whole point, you know, that children aren’t good at making decisions.

One thing the book has going for it is its realistic ending. It is reflective of how actual sexual assault cases normally work out in real life.

I wanted more from this book. There was so much potential, with such a powerful topic, but ultimately it was a let down. This book is truly an example of “great concept, terrible execution.” There is so much missing from what really should have been a hard-hitting novel. Instead it’s bland and lukewarm and left me cold and uninterested.

I enjoyed reading this family saga of a family falling apart. The Woodburys apparently have a perfect life in a Connecticut suburb. The father, George, is a local hero until he is arrested and accused of sexual misconduct with under age girls. This book explores how this event effects the rest of the family. Joan the wife who tries hard to stand by her man, Sadie the daughter and Andrew the grown gay son living in NYC. The father's arrest calls into question everything they believed in as a family. The characters and the privileged setting are very believable. The book is very quick and easy to read despite the serious subject. Enjoy

George Woodbury was a respected man in the wealthy suburban community that his grandfather had built. He was a popular teacher at the local private school where he had once disarmed a shooter intent on killing an employee. After that incident he was chosen Teacher of The Year every year. George had "family money" and served on several local boards. He and his WASP family were well respected in their town.

So it came as a complete surprise when George was arrested for "sexual misconduct with 4 minors and the attempted rape of a minor". The alleged activities took place while he was a chaperone on the school ski trip.

No one in the Woodbury family, which included Sadie, a 17 year senior at the school, Joan, his wife who was a nursing supervisor at a local hospital and their older son Andrew , a lawyer in NYC, could not believe the charges. George was by all accounts, an exemplary father and husband. Yet there were 4 different young girls who had made the allegations.

George was imprisoned without parole for almost a year while awaiting trial. Sadie became a pariah in the school and lost most of her friends. She eventually moved to the house of her boyfriend Jimmy, to avoid the media camped outside the Woodbury home. Joan took an extended break from her hospital job while trying to help with George's defense.

As the various family members supported George with phone calls and visits in prison, they also began to uncover many secrets about him.

I found this book interesting and read it quickly. However I felt that the ending was unsatisfactory.

Made for TV movie type story of a respected teacher accused of sexual misconduct with students. Writing and story started out okay but got worse as the book wore on.. Don't recommend.

I must admit that I found this book extremely predictable and derivative. I had looked forward to reading this, especially because of my background in education, despite this, I found this dull full of stereotypical characters.

I could find nothing exciting or interesting in this novel. Despite the fact that it deals with a topic that is certainly often in the news, Whittal fails to bring anything new to the table. The use of a potential school shooting at the start seems artificial and unconnected.

This really was a major disappointment.

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