The whole community is stunned when restaurant owners Althea and Proctor are arrested. Althea's siblings come together to support Althea and figure out care for her children, but there are plenty of other issues back from childhood that have never been dealt with and now come to the surface.

The author is a good writer and the novel deals with an important issue and I absolutely LOVE the title--however this story is a really slow. Once I found out what Proctor and Althea were on trial for, I kinda lost interest.

With the prison population full to bursting in the US, this book is an important look at its effects on children. Aside from that, the book gives a snapshot of the effects of abuse and neglect decades after it ends. This was a great read.

Exploring the many faces of grief and trauma, in this family saga four siblings attempt to come to terms with their childhood trauma, the different places it takes them to and the ripple effect on those around them. The book vacillates between coping and not coping, togetherness and distance, and the use of language in the co-creation of meaning. Excellent and thought-provoking. – Leza Bredenkamp

This review appears in Romantic Intentions Quarterly #4.

Choices are important, but intentions make the woman, or so we learn in this powerful novel. The story is told via multiple points of view of several strong women in the same family. A good readalike for fans of Tayari Jones.

A very dynamic and psychologically rich story of sisters and family, the ties and the hardships and the secrets that hold them together and tear them apart. The family history is mined to reveal the reasons and motivations for the present, complex and deep. The women are multi-faceted and emotionally real, and react and respond to adversity and crisis in believable and diverse ways. The interplay of all the characters was fascinating and fully engrossing. These are real people you might not always like, but you will want to know how they make it through the challenges before them. Too complicated to detail here. I highly recommend.

The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray follows the Butler family as they deal with the fallout of one of the sibling's decision to commit a crime in their town. The remaining siblings have to deal with remaining in the town and caring for the two teen daughters of the perpetrator. The crime is glossed over in the story but the ramifications of it are not. Lots of family drama and dealing with past behaviors abound in this tale. Read and enjoy!

I wish I could say I enjoyed this book, but I found it disturbing. I am definitely going to recommend for book groups at our library. The author is a talented writer and kept me completely engaged. I know our patrons will appreciate Ms Gray's talent in character development.

While I did not especially enjoy this book, I think our patrons will agree that it is an excellent example of today’s world.

What a great debut novel! The author is adept at language, alternating between small town lingo and prison slang. The book is clearly laid out with chapters delineating whose point of view is to follow. And the characters: heartfelt, heart-breaking, sympathetic, maddening. This feels like a real story of family dynamics in a struggling dysfunctional family. I enjoyed this novel a lot!

Thanks to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing for the ARC to read and review.

This is a unique and complex novel of a complicated family. Althea is in jail waiting to be sentenced as is her husband. Althea essentially became a mother at the age of twelve when her own mother died, but the surviving younger siblings have a thorny relationship with their incarcerated sister, their siblings, and themselves. That’s what I liked about this book. The three sisters and one brother didn’t have easy childhoods, and their flawed adulthoods reflects that.

When Althea gave birth to fraternal twins, she tried to be a good mother, but she spent most of her time building the restaurant. Now that she’s in jail, her youngest sister is watching over the troubled teenage girls. Battling her own demons, she does her best, but everyone is struggling.

This isn’t a fun read exactly, but it’s well written, and you appreciate the way these characters try their best in difficult circumstances, making a lot of mistakes along the way.

A novel about a family in crisis already has a hook that will form the basis of a plot, but it's what the author does with that storyline that determines the quality of the overall package.
Anissa Gray is an author that knows what she's doing, and allows the reader to follow along as a family deals with the arrest and imprisonment of two of their members.
We never learn too much about the details about the crime, instead we see how the situation impacts their twin, teenage daughters and the rest of the family trying to pick up the pieces.

A poignant debut chronicling a family in crisis set in Michigan. Gray’s Care and Feeding takes place in the aftermath of Althea and Proctor’s arrest and convictions when Althea’s two younger sisters come together and to try and look after their nieces. But the life-changing events expose the faults that have shaped the Butler family—the relationships between mothers and daughters, siblings, issues of identity and body image, guilt and regrets. It is understandably compared to The Mothers and An American Marriage. It’s also a surprisingly fast read for a such and emotionally weighty one.

Comparing a book to An American Marriage is risky, but this debut is up to the challenge! After an upstanding couple in the community is arrested, it is their family who is most affected. Told from the perspectives of three sisters, this book is about mistakes big and small, sleights real and perceived, and what we will (or won’t) do for family.

This family drama explores the lives of three sisters after the oldest is sent to prison with her husband for embezzling charity money, leaving her two teenage daughters to navigate a community bitter about being duped. Alternating viewpoints reveal family secrets long ignored and rifts that may still be mended. For readers of An American Marriage or The Mothers.

I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Well-written novel about a family and the scars that we carry from our childhoods. The ending was satisfying and hopeful.

A story of conflict within a family and how each member is affected. Not for those who want a nice, easy read.

Really gripping beginning to the story, dramatic and engaging plot. Switches viewpoint every chapter between three sisters each coping with the fallout after, Althea, the oldest sister, and her husband are sent to prison.

The story is there and the characters are very interesting but somewhere midpoint this book started losing my interest. Still worth reading but fell short of expectations after such an interesting opening. I would read the next book by Anissa Gray to see how she grows as an author.

I was definitely not impressed with this book. I had a very difficult time getting into the story. I didn't enjoy the writing or the story.

Althea and Proctor Cochran are upstanding members of their rural, poor community- at least until it comes to light that they have been defrauding the same community they were ostensibly helping. Told in alternating point of views, this story explores the way repercussions ripple through a family as they navigate through a crisis.

While this was well-written, it was not a book that I thoroughly enjoyed. The pacing felt a bit slow even as the tone grew occasionally frenetic and those things created a discord for me. That said, if you are interested in the minutia of family life and of thorough examination of how actions have drastic and unforeseeable consequences, then this may be a book for you.

*I received this book from NetGalley in return for a honest review.*

Often, when I get to the end of a book, I'm left wanting to know what happens to the characters after the last page. Much less frequently, do I feel the need to know about what happened before the first page. But that was how I felt with this book. What happened to get this family into this predicament. Some of it was ancient history, some more recent, some became very clear, but a lot stayed very hazy in my mind. I get that the details of the past may not have been the point, but I think a little more history would have helped me to understand the characters actions and reactions and why certain things have meaning. It is clear that Gray's characters are all very much alive in her mind, but I had trouble getting them to come alive for me.

3.5 stars
This book is rare and emotional and hard to read at times, but so compelling. The characters in this book felt so real and honest, it was hard to read at times. The plot wasn’t crazy unique or special but executed well. I just wasn’t as blown away by it as I was expecting to be. It was an awesome read and I would recommend, but if you are expecting an amazing wow best book ever, I don’t think this is it. However it is an excellent book.