Megan Hart
All Fall Down
Harlequin Mira (US: 27th December 2011; AU: 1st January 2012)
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This author is a bit hit-and-miss for me. Hit: Precious and Fragile Things, Exit Light. Miss: Order of Solace series. All Fall Down is closer to a hit.
The premise is irresistible – a young mother and her children escape from a cult before those remaining commit mass suicide.
Liesel Albright has always wanted children, though her husband Christopher would prefer not to have any. They don’t use contraception, but don’t try IVF.
Well, the woman from his first marriage was pregnant when she left Chris to join the Family of Superior Bliss. And now Chris’s nineteen-year-old daughter has arrived on his doorstep with her three spawn.
Liesel wanted children, but she wanted hers; not someone else’s, and not so many of them. She quits her job to care for the kids while Sunny works in a coffee shop. Soon Liesel learns the awful truth: children don’t live up to their theoretical greatness. They actually rather suck.
There’s no two ways about it: there’s a lot of faeces in this novel. Not smeared on the pages, and not a comment on the story, but…well, with three young children there’ll always be lots of vomit and excrement. The sheer amount of bodily…stuff in this novel is disgusting. Really.
Luckily, for the most part the plot is not as whiffy, though there is something that drives me up the frigging wall. SPOILER TIME! Remember how Liesel’s wanted to fall pregnant for years? Well, guess who’s knocked up with twenty pages of the book left. Same partner, so it’s not like she shagged someone more fertile. Surprise!pregnancies as plot points are really freaking annoying.
On the whole, the novel is quite awesome, but when it’s bad, it’s appalling. Fingers crossed the author’s next novel doesn’t feature as much poo.
Tez Says 