Guest Review: Other People’s Houses by Abbi Waxman

Happy Monday everyone! Got Sophia Rose on the blog today with a review of Other People’s Houses. Totally exciting to see what she thinks of it myself because I am going to be listening to my copy in the near future. Enjoy!

Other People's Houses by Abbi Waxman
Series: standalone
Published by Berkley Books on April 3rd 2018
Pages: 352
Format: Paperback
Source: Publisher
Buy on Amazon
Rating:

I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

"Abbi Waxman is both irreverent and thoughtful."--#1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Giffin
And now the author of The Garden of Small Beginnings returns with a hilarious and poignant new novel about four families, their neighborhood carpool, and the affair that changes everything.
At any given moment in other people's houses, you can find...repressed hopes and dreams...moments of unexpected joy...someone making love on the floor to a man who is most definitely not her husband...
*record scratch*
As the longtime local carpool mom, Frances Bloom is sometimes an unwilling witness to her neighbors' private lives. She knows her cousin is hiding her desire for another baby from her spouse, Bill Horton's wife is mysteriously missing, and now this...
After the shock of seeing Anne Porter in all her extramarital glory, Frances vows to stay in her own lane. But that's a notion easier said than done when Anne's husband throws her out a couple of days later. The repercussions of the affair reverberate through the four carpool families--and Frances finds herself navigating a moral minefield that could make or break a marriage.

After the thoroughly engaging The Garden of Small Beginnings, I was pleased to settle back into the writing world that this author can create.

Other People’s Houses is a different style standalone story than the other, though happily there are a few minor crossover scenes. This one is a wry, varnish free up close and personal with four families in a typical middle-class LA neighborhood.

The main narrator is middle-aged, even-keeled Frances Bloom. Frances is comfortable and content. Well, as content as is probably possible- she has the squabbles with her teen daughter, the extra weight that never left after the kids came, the usual spousal disagreements, and the occasional wonder ‘is this my life?’, but yes, overall, she can’t complain. She enjoys being a stay at home, carpool mom with three kids and a comfortable marriage with a man who is more best friend than lover these days. Life is tripping along as normal until Frances comes across one of her neighbors she saw as cool, put together, and happily married, in an affair.

Anne’s affair has far reaching repercussions in her own life, her family’s, but also the neighborhood.

Suddenly people are not so content and all the neighbors are taking a closer look at themselves, their relationships and their lives. One married pair are tense as Iris wants a baby and Sara would rather not. Another married man, Bill is the butt of whispers as people wonder where his wife, Julie, has gone and Bill himself wants her with him. The kids and Charlie are reeling from Anne’s betrayal and what a broken family feels like. Meanwhile Frances and Michael are the unofficial anchors in the neighborhood, though, they do, are forced to pause and evaluate their own lives.

The rhythm of the book is slow as it meanders through all these lives and their days. The gentle pace can get soporific, but that’s where the author’s writing keeps the reader engaged. There are spot on observations, ponderings, and of course those giggle-worthy moments. This is an everyday average people story where the reader who may be middle-aged and/or a parent, a neighbor in a relatively quiet neighborhood can nod, ‘I’ve thought that’. Oh, no, it’s not everyone’s neighborhood or family life, but there is a familiarity to it, nonetheless.

The story ends on a crisis that brings things to a point so that the neighbor situations are all forced to resolve and yet, I had a curiosity for where these people will be in five years, ten, twenty… I got connected without realizing it, it seems.

It was a well-written piece of character-driven fiction. I’m very taken with this author’s writing style. Mildly engaging, a touch bitter at times, and thoughtful, flavored with the sweetness humor and wry housewife wit. I don’t think it is a book that will appeal to everyone, but it’s great if you are a people watcher and want to just sit back and observe the life in Other People’s Houses.

My thanks to the author for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

About Sophia Rose

Sophia is a quiet though curious gal who dabbles in cooking, book reviewing, and gardening. Encouraged and supported by an incredible man and loving family. A Northern Californian transplant to the Great Lakes Region of the US. Lover of Jane Austen, Baseball, Cats, Scooby Doo, and Chocolate.

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