A Million Reasons Why
Jessica Strawser
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368 pages
St Martins Press
March 23, 2021
This book is a family drama, involving grown two half-sisters (who just met), the father of both, and their respective families. The two sisters met under strange and stressful circumstances.
The plot is multi-layered and intense. It involves secrets that everyone carries. The discovery of these secrets is proving to be devastating.
The characters are all well developed and realistic. They suit the story well. The 2 sisters take turns narrating the story. Their perspectives of the situation are not the same. It gets intense. Then comes the question to the reader: What would you do? There are decisions to be made, the reader is kept wondering what the outcome will be.
There is a huge double twist to the story as it nears the end. It surprised me and made the story even better.
Fans of Diane Chamberlain and early Jodi Picoult will enjoy this book. The complex plotline is very similar to the type of stories they produce.
Now, my negative comment about this book… it was a hard book to read. This was not about the storyline but the writing style. It is very wordy, sometimes I had to reread whole sentences or paragraphs to understand what was being said. The one thing that bothered me several times throughout the book: one character would say or ask something, then there was a lot of lines of narrative before the other character replied or reacted. By that time I had to backtrack to refresh my mind about what they were answering. I did finally get somewhat used to the writing style but I found that it detracted from the story. From my perspective, it is not necessary to have a fancy writing style to convey a good story. Sometimes, simple is good.
This book would have been a 5 star rating for me if I hadn’t felt that I was slogging through parts of it. I enjoyed the story and the characters a lot but could only rate it 4 stars. Perhaps if I had read it at a different time, the writing style would not have been an issue for me. But, I am glad that I read this book.
I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
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