Not a Happy Family by Shari Lapena [book review]

Not a Happy Family book summary

Not a happy family follows the Mertons. They are as rich as they come. Nice house, nice neighborhood, and nice cars. They have it made. This is until the day that someone comes into their home and kills them. It doesn’t help that it happened sometime after Easter dinner with their three adult kids. Do they say they are devastated but are they really? They all will inherit millions. Does this give them any reason to kill their parents? It doesn’t help that they weren’t a happy family, to begin with.

What I thought

I have been taking full advantage of my library providing audiobooks through the Libby app. I honestly wish I had started using it sooner. Not a Happy Family is one of the ones I found through Libby. What caught my attention is one the cover and two I love thrillers. It’s always hard for me to imagine a rich family having this many problems. At least not to the point where one of their children would kill them. Here are my thoughts on the book.

The Characters

The story pretty much follows four siblings. We get their stories and they all look guilty. There are a few others outside the immediate family who look guilty as well. The characters are a part of the reason I didn’t enjoy this story as well. Most of them are super whiney all throughout the book. It was okay at first but got old pretty fast. Not only that but I got tired of hearing their bickering.

It is kind of sad how the kid’s father treated them. Even though we didn’t really get his side of the story we do find out some things he did. He was not a very nice man and their mother never defended them. Still feel like other kids have it worse with their parents, but I get why they would be upset. You expect your parents to be nurturing and they are absolutely not.

The Plot

The plot of the story is pretty well done. My only issue is having to listen (audiobook) bicker all of the time. Otherwise, the story is well-paced. I didn’t find the story predictable like other readers dealt with. Maybe I’m just not as hard on the book as they were. Granted the book probably should have been a little shorter.

Some of the plot twists were pretty similar to other thrillers while other plot twists were pretty smart. Nothing really new is brought to this story and is a lot like other thrillers out there. I do suggest reading the story though because it’s still pretty good and who knows you might enjoy it a little bit more than I did.

How do you guys feel about family drama thrillers?

If you enjoy books like this then you might also like Home Before Dark.