A very different kind of story that leaves you with lots of questions!

I couldn't put this book down and have been sad since it ended because I enjoyed it so much. Completely addictive story and the way it's told unfolds perfectly. Five stars and two thumbs up!

I was intrigued by the plot of The Best Kind of People. This book was looking at the aftermath of when a teacher is accused of sexual assault on a student. When I mean aftermath, I mean how the family is affected by everything that happened and how they cope with it. So, I was a little disappointed when the book didn’t live up to my internal hype of it.

I could not connect with any of the characters after my initial feeling bad for them. There was a disconnect with Sadie, Andrew, and Joan with me. They didn’t seem to ring true as I read the book. Sadie’s descent into smoking pot and stealing drugs was a little too much for me. What also was a little too much was Andrew’s reactions to his hometown. To sum it up: He loved to hate the town and the people in it. And then there is Joan. For someone who kept saying that she didn’t look down on people, she sure looked down on everyone in the book. She was very judgy and she drove me nuts. Her reactions to different relationships nailed it for me.

What I did like, and I wish more emphasis was put on it, was George and what he did. The author did a great job keeping you on your toes. Did George do it or was he being set up? There wasn’t a concrete answer. You were forced to make your own decision based on the facts that the author let leak during the story. It was great.

The author also did a great job portraying a family that was blindsided by what happened. The effect of George and his arrest almost dismantled his family. Sadie got the worst of it…seeing that she was in the same school as her accusers. She went from being a popular well-liked girl to a social pariah within a day. Andrew, whose relationship was already on shaky ground, started developing awful anger and relationship issues. Joan was having issues coming to term with what George did and had no clue how to act or what to do. The author also did a great job of showing how they recovered or didn’t recover, from what happened.

The end of the book was not a happy one which was ok with me. Not all endings have to be happy. There were still issues that needed to be resolved and you are left wondering “Did he do it?”

My Summary of The Best Kind of People: 3 stars

The Best Kind of People started off with a bang and then stalled out before ending on a weak note. While I liked that I was kept on my toes about George, I felt that there was a disconnect with his family and that is what brought the book down a star for me.

Will I reread: Maybe

Will I recommend to family and friends: Maybe

Age range: Adult

Why: Sexual situations, drug use

I would like to thank Zoe Whittall, NetGalley, Random House and Ballantine Books for allowing me to review The Best Kind of People

**I chose to leave this review after reading an advance reader copy**

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: I have a material connection because I received a review copy for free from Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Sadie, a senior in high school, is on the fast track to the college of her choice and has a boyfriend that she adores. Her life has not been perfect, but the trauma of a childhood event that could have ended in her life is now a memory, like a bad dream. But it really happened, and her father became the hero, saving her life and undoubtedly many others in the process.

She has a great family. Her mom, Joan, is an ER nurse. Her dad, George, is a beloved teacher at the school she attends. Her brother, Andrew, is older, has moved away from their hometown and is in the process of finding happiness away from the ghosts of his past. Unfortunately, the entire family’s almost perfect life is about to come unraveled at the seams.

George and Joan Woodbury have a nice home in a gated community. Unfortunately, the fences are not high enough to keep the lions from the gates once George is arrested. He tells his wife there is a group of girls lying about him. They say he sexually assaulted them on a field trip. When the police unexpectedly arrive at their doorstep, handcuff George and execute a search warrant on their home, his family is devastated. He assures them it is only a formality and he will be home as soon as his lawyer clears up this misunderstanding. Unfortunately for George, he is seen as a flight risk due to his family’s money and bail is denied.

Joan is trying hard to hold things together. The press won’t leave them alone and almost all of her friends have abandoned her. Her sister is there to support her and her son Andrew is coming back on weekends to do what he can. But sometimes you need someone you are not related to in order to share what you are thinking and how you really feel. So even before the trial, she decides she needs to go to a support group for families of people who commit crimes like those George has been accused of.

Sadie can’t go to school because of the comments, stares and numbness inside of her. All of the sudden her life is no longer what she ever imagined and honestly is having trouble coping. Is her father guilty? Are the girls lying or telling the truth? Either way, will her family survive intact?

This novel is so real it is frightening. Sometimes monsters are ordinary people living ordinary lives. Lies are told, crimes are committed and they could be the next door neighbor that you invite over for a BBQ – until their secrets are exposed. Whittall’s characters come alive on the pages through little things that made them seem like people you work with, live by or live with. Conversations subtly demonstrated the growth and pain of each, drawing the reader into their thoughts and confusion.

This is the first novel I have read my Zoe .53Whittall; it will not be my last. She is the author of Bottle Rocket Hearts and Holding Still for as Long as Possible. It is no surprise that Ms. Whittall is a national bestselling author in Canada or that The Best Kind of People was a finalist for the 2016 Giller Prize. If you are a fan of Jodi Picoult – you will love The Best Kind of People.

Copyright © 2017 Laura Hartman

I had a hard time connecting with this book. It never grabbed me. I think there were issues with the plot and the writing - several things were summarized that I, as a reader, wanted to "see" through the characters; often the characters' actions and decision didn't make sense; and overall the characters just weren't believable. I skimmed the last 25% or so, not because I cared or wanted to know what happened, but because I wanted to be able to say I finished.

A well written book that dives into the complex topic of how well we really know the people we love and trust. Pieces of the story were unveiled at just the right pace to keep me very engaged. It is a fast read while still giving you plenty to think about. At times it reminded me a bit of the book Defending Jacob. The characters are well crafted and multi-dimensional and there is a very interesting interplay between two characters that helps to drive home the message that not everything is what it appears to be. I will definitely be checking out the author's earlier books.

This book will definitely have your mind racing like crazy! I read the last half in one night, because I just couldn't put it down. Many twists and turns, you think you know what is going to happen...and then BOOM...another twist. I would recommend this book, just make sure you leave yourself enough time to finish it when you can't put it down.

To begin with, the book has a gripping beginning-- the prominent George, husband, father and beloved teacher who stopped a school shooting in his younger years, is accused and hauled off to jail for allegedly sexually assaulting several female students at his upper class, private school in his all-white, upper class, insulated community. The book focused more on the effects this has on the family members left in the wake of this tragedy. This is not a book about the investigation into the accusations or really into George's side of things at all. I was pulled into the lives of Sadie, Andrew and Joan, George's children and wife, respectively. The story addresses not only the effects of George's arrest and accusations on these characters, but it also addresses the culture of a community that is insulated to a fault. The author addresses issues of homophobic attitudes among this group of people as well as rape culture. The book derailed a bit at the end, as the trial takes place and left me thinking, "I have followed the lives of these characters for an ending that is so abrupt and unsatisfying for the characters?" This isn't to say that the book is unsatisfying as a whole....it was compelling and engaging throughout, up to the end. Thank you to netgalley for a couple of this book in exchange for an honest review.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2085160380

Avalon Hills is wealthy, privileged and, above all, white. Not a hint of scandal has touched it since a long-ago event where a man came into a school to shoot his ex-girlfriend and anyone who got in his way. George Woodbury was a hero that day, tackling the gunman and saving the school. Since then, the wealthy-by-inheritance teacher, has been Teacher of the Year and everyone's favorite mentor. His marriage seems perfect although his gay son has left the unforgiving suburb. His later-in-life daughter, Sadie, is a prodigy on her way to Ivy greatness. His wife, a nurse, is beloved by neighbors and colleagues, alike.

Then it all goes wrong, George is arrested for allegedly molesting and raping four young women on a senior class trip. He denies the allegation, but he is hiding secrets, monetary failure, a long ago molestation, and other behavior his loyal wife, June, knows nothing about.

As George goes to jail, the Woodbury's perfect life collapses like a house of cards. A man Sadie trusts betrays her. Andrew returns home, but destroys his stable relationship in the process. June walks a tightrope between disbelief and pure denial of her husband's behavior.

This is a solid read with good character development and more than a whiff of believability in this current climate of tabloid news and shocking revelations. George, who maintains his innocence but circumstances would seem otherwise, receives retribution in jail. Joan seesaws between developing strength and choosing the practicality of remaining in the marriage for financial reasons.

Sadie is the most complex and well developed of the characters as her teenage perfection skids into getting high and dropping out of her life as her idealized parent fails her.

Well written and a solid, page turning book perfect for book club discussion.

I admit that I could not put this book down, but is disliked every one of the characters. Well written, compelling, thought-provoking, but I just didn't like anyone. So I didn't really care what happened to them. Still.....I couldn't stop reading. Maybe that's the important thing.

Certainly the best kind of characters inhabit this beautifully written story. Ms. Whittall has genius for getting inside the minds of the family of George Woodbury, a respected teacher and local hero, as their lives come apart at the seams after George is arrested for sexually assaulting a student. What kept me reading — and I finished the book in just a few days — was not so much the question of George’s guilt or innocence, but how the people close to him deal with the accusations. The characters are complex, endlessly fascinating, well-drawn and totally believable. I once heard Elmo Leonard say that he simply created his characters and then they told him what they want to do. The Woodbury family and their friends and neighbors appear to me to have a life of their own. Highly recommend this book!

I have wavered between many different emotions with this book. I can't recall reading a book where you never meet one of the main characters. Your perceptions of this individual are created by learning about how the rest of the characters in the book. feel about them. Almost the entire book centers around what one believes to be the all American Family, a wife/mother, daughter and son and their feelings for the husband/father., The book is about loyalty, love, perception, doubt, societal stigmas, and truth. The book left me agonizing over the husband/father and how I would feel about him. You can never make a judgment because his character is never developed autonomously. The end of the book was very disappointing as it felt that author wanted the book to end and left you high and dry. It is a divisive novel. If you prefer feel good stories, you hate ambiguity, you prefer a clear, likeable protagonist this is not the book for you.

It's not giving anything away to say that a Dad gets arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting some minors at the top of this book. So it's not unreasonable to assume that the reader would want to know, by the end of the book, the answer to the big question: "What really happened? Did he really do it?"

Well, sadly this book isn't going to give you that answer. (You or the characters in the book, one of which never even learns all of the facts behind the case). Actually for the first half of the book (which, in my opinion, has pacing issues) you will mainly sit with the family while they ponder the awfulness and oddness of the whole situation and no questions are answered at all. Yes, you will end the book knowing MORE about this man and if he's capable of the crime, but you will not end the book knowing the TRUTH. So, for me, that was frustrating.

I can only suspect that the message of this book is that people seldom know the "real truth" during these types of events. Perhaps that it's for this reason that the father and the girls he assaulted are so removed for much of the story. Instead this story focuses more on the family this man destroyed with his alleged actions. While I found their stories (particularly the wife's) interesting, in the end I kept coming back to the man and the girls and wanting to know more about them.

So, would you like this book? That's up to you and the type of story you'd like to read. If you'd like to read a story about a family struggling with the fall out from something awful, perhaps you will find this book interesting. However, for me, that fall out is more interesting when placed in the context of the event, which was ultimately unobserved and unreported.

"I'm just saying that we shift around on a seesaw moral continuum for our whole lives. Nobody stays the same."

George Woodbury is the most popular teacher at Avalon Hills prep school and he is also a hometown hero. So when he is accused of (undisclosed) sexual improprieties while chaperoning a school field trip, the battle lines are drawn. His family -- wife, Joan, (gay) son Andrew, and high school senior, Sadie, are caught up in the crossfire and drama.

This book could have been great -- it had all the right ingredients for an intense story that provided insight and instigated discussion. It's meant to be, I think, a look at rape culture. The main concept a sort of "he said, she said" but it fell short -- the reader never hears anything about the actual accusations, the girls involved, or from George, the accused. So it was basically a one-sided look at how the immediate family dealt with the situation. George is remanded to prison without bail so his voice is absent throughout. The characters in this book were a mishmash of messed up, stat quoting, stereotypes displaying some absolutely ridiculous behaviors. I felt NOTHING for any of them and no empathy for their plight was evoked. Frankly, I didn't like them, wouldn't want to know them, and definitely wouldn't be interested in them as people.

The pace was incredibly slow and I had to force my way to the end hoping for some kind of payoff, some information about the case, and a resolution of sorts. The conclusion was abrupt and unfulfilling and reader is left with more questions than answers. I'm not recommending it even though the subject matter is something that does beg discussion. Not sure why this is getting rave reviews or winning awards. I also don't like when the author's own bias and politics shows so clearly.

Thank you to NetGally and Ballantine Books for the e-book ARC to read and review.

Last night right after I finished: My preface to the review should definitely say that I work at a private high school. The teens in this book in no way resemble any type of adolescent that I have come across in over 14 years. I have no idea why authors write teenagers this way -- yeah, I know some smoke pot and engage in sexual behavior, etc. But I must say, I do not like how these young adults are portrayed in literature. I have two daughters -- if anything untoward -- such as a sexual impropriety by an adult -- had ever happened to either of them I would have gone crazy. Why are the lines so seemingly blurred these days between what is acceptable and what is not? Full review tomorrow, but this book left me flat.

This novel starts out strong. When George Woodbury, a respected teacher, is arrested for sexual misconduct with minors and attempted rape of a minor, the lives of his wife of nearly thirty years and his children, Andrew, a lawyer, and seventeen-year-old Sadie, are torn in pieces.

The arrest divides the town of Avalon and the private school where George teaches and Sadie is a senior. It was hard reading the stuff from the men’s rights group, who think women make up rape charges when sex didn’t go as they wanted or they felt some kind of guilt for their bad behavior. But that was the point: Do you believe George, who has never said anything improper about young girls and whose computer is without child porn, or do you believe the young women?
As his wife and children waver about whether they believe his claims that he’s being set up, they find themselves ostracized at work, school, and church. Andrew fairs better since he lives in the city, not the small town anymore, but it wreaks havoc on his relationship with his long-term partner.

I didn’t love the ending. Maybe it was the author’s point that such cases are never black and white, but in the world of fiction, I wish the author had made some different choices.

Thanks to NetGalley and Ballantine for the opportunity to review this book.

I opened this book and read the first page. It pulled me in immediately. I found this book to be a deep exploration of the psychological effect a major event has on a family. We follow Sadie, Andrew and Joan as they come to grips with their father and husband being charged with sexual abuse. At times it felt so raw. At times I wanted to look away. But, of course I couldn't.

I was really looking forward to reading this book and I have to say I enjoyed the plot line, I felt the characters were interesting and multi-dimensional. I was motivated to keep reading as I wanted to know how it ended, however while I enjoyed the book I was completely underwhelmed by the ending. It wasn't a matter of not liking the way the plot ended, but rather in how it was written. It was so abrupt it seemed as if the author just needed to finish the book as fast as possible and wrote the last page in a hurry.

Unfortunately, I believe that the book "The Best Kind of People" is way over rated and over hyped. While reading, my inner voice would sometimes whisper, "wouldn't you rather be listening to nails scratch across a chalk board?" Seriously though, a wealthy and respected man in a generic upper class New England town is charged with sexual contact with minors, among other things. We never find out the details of the crimes he was accused of committing and throughout the book this man, George, is treated as a very one dimensional character anyway so we don't really care if he is stuck in jail. What happened on this "field trip" that ultimately causes a man to fall from grace so quickly and be charged of assaulting young teen girls? I felt that it was a mistake that the author did not include the details of what George was put in jail for and denied bail for. I am having real trouble reviewing this book coherently because it tries to hit so many topical subjects-teenage drinking ,drug use and sexual experience, bullying, homosexuality, rape, slut shaming, feminism, and anti-feminism while failing to reach its mark in any of the categories. One of the major story lines includes the constant pot smoking that Sadie, the teenager daughter of George, does. Yes, I feel that marijuana should be listed in the book blurb as a main character of this book. Sadie is constantly high, wanting to get high, wishing she wasn't high, having sex with her boyfriend, being "confused" about her feelings and having a flirtatious relationship with a forty year old man. Enough. I forced myself to finish the entire book only because I was drawn to Joan, the wife of George and Mother of Sadie's story. I wanted to read about how she dealt with her husband's crimes. In the end, even her story line did not satisfy and I can only hope that all of the loathsome characters in this book eventually get their just desserts.

Thank you to NetGalley for a chance to read and review this book.

To be honest, I'm not sure if I liked this book or not. The topic seemed really interesting and it started out strong, but it kind of wandered aimlessly from there. There was a lot of fluff that didn't really go anywhere. It's hard to review this book without giving spoilers because the things I didn't like about it are major plot points and the way it resolved. So without giving spoilers, I can say that I would like to have seen a stronger storyline in this book. It was a book that had a lot of potential that just fell flat. The writing was good, but some of the characters could have been fleshed out better and it could have benefitted from better resolution. I was left with a lot of questions and not feeling very satisfied. I mainly wish we could have seen some of it from George's point of view. I feel like we never really got a chance to understand him. Same for his accusers. I would have found this book more interesting with their stories and their points of view. Without it, it felt like a mystery that was never solved.

A novel about a family trying to cope with the sudden arrest of the father for attempted rape of a teen during a school event he chaperones. A well thought of man and teacher, we follow his teen daughter, adult son and wife through the initial days all the way up through the trial. A unique perspective of the ripple effect of charges for not just the accused and accusers but their families. Characters are well developed and sympathetic