A Wigwam for a Goose's Bridle

I’m reluctantly giving this book 2 stars because I have to admit it was an easy and compelling read. Unfortunately, however, I found it frustrating and the ending is a cop out.

The Adler family looks perfect from the outside, so why is their house being attacked? Turns out they each have secrets to hide so whose secret is responsible for the attacks?

Spoilers from here on in. I saw it coming that the repeated attacks were not all by the same perpetrator for the same reason. This just gets messy. Thomas, the father, is being blackmailed by his assistant for something he didn’t do. Viv, the mum, is a kleptomaniac, stole some teen’s dodgy drugs, got him in trouble, so he did some of the attacks. Eli is back from college, traumatised from witnessing a violent hazing event. He put some local kids onto chucking stuff at his house because hey, wouldn’t it be funny to freak out your parents, but then they wouldn’t stop. This part of the story doesn’t work well because the novel is written alternating from each of the family’s viewpoints so we hear frequently that Eli is legitimately freaked out by the attacks and worried that it’s the blokes from college trying to make him keep his mouth shut. But he should know it’s not them given that he apparently started this. Tarryn, the youngest, had a secret online life as a cam girl and starts getting pervy messages. At some point her friend admits to sending them to her to try to scare her away from the dangers of the internet. I didn’t buy that for a second, and sure enough Tarryn suddenly realises that her friends didn’t send ALL the messages so there’s a stalkery weirdo still out there. This is never resolved. She just decides to forget about him and moves on with a new friend (Girlfriend? The stalker? Who even knows? New character is introduced mere paragraphs before the end of the book.) Then, just when I was frustrated enough that Tarryn was unresolved and Eli was unbelievable, two months have passed since the last attack, Viv breathes a sigh of relief, and then another egg hits the house. Literally. So it’s not even over and so much is unresolved. It felt like one of those middle school “and then I woke and it was all a dream” endings.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC. I’m sorry I can’t recommend it.