The Family Game, a review by Shelley

I really don’t know where to start with this book except to say I was thoroughly disappointed. Last summer I read and enjoyed The Disappearing Act by Catherine Steadman. This one started out okay, a woman with a secret joins a family with a secret and a game of cat and mouse ensues. I was really enjoying the first part of the book as it was a very suspenseful read at the start, but then the book took a turn at the first family Christmas party which just wasn’t logical.

Then the second family Christmas party starts and I didn’t think it possible but gets even worse. I  mean it was so unrealistic that I started to laugh. Anyone with a modicum of sense would have run the other way as fast as they could. I mean the woman is pregnant and she’s moving heavy furniture, running up and down five flights of stairs with a toddler on her hip, climbing down wells in the snow, and running into burning buildings to save the help. I didn’t buy into this scenario at all. Add in the repetitiveness and some head-scratching reveals the book veers into a catastrophically bad read.

My GoodReads friends have given this book a 3.91 average so I am not sure we were even reading the same story. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect a thriller to be 100% believable but when a plot has me laughing out loud at the ridiculousness of it something’s wrong.