Book Review: Good Family by Terry Gamble

Good Family: A Novel by Terry Gamble


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I am glad that I did not read the reviews before I read this book. I may not have given it a chance. This book takes place at Sand Isle on the Lake Michigan coast. A grown family returns to their summer home to help their aunt and mother die peacefully. Mattie is the black sheep of the family who has been absent for 11 years. The family is full of hardships and struggles and coming back to the summer home seems to bring out these struggles in each family member.

I did have a hard time keeping the families straight, as there are a lot of characters including aunts and uncles, sisters, nieces and nephews. A lot to comprehend about each of them. This story has a lot to it, and the language I found was hard to get through at times. There wasn't as much as an emphasis on the WASP way of life, which I found disappointing as it is mentioned on the back cover. Sand Isle is mainly a community of families who have money and made their fortunes off of selling medicines, curtain rods, or horse whips.

While at the summer house Mattie finds her great-grandmother's diary and discovers that her immediate family is not the only one who had struggles to go through. I enjoyed reading entries of the diary but during "Part Two" of the book was at times confused about what time frame we were in. The book went back and forth between the past and present and was hard to grasp it all at times.

This book was enjoyable, but I would suggest reading it when you have time to study it. It does take some brain power to get through.

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