My Never Ending List

I took my time reading this novel as it was a calm read. I liked that it was a book that I could read for a while and put it down and still remember the characters and the storyline later on. The story stayed with me, my mind was thinking about the characters and their daily lives but I wasn’t anxious and restless to finish the novel which was a great feeling. I don’t get this feeling very often when I am reading so I cherished it. I thought the middle of this novel dragged on a bit but otherwise, I thought there was a lot to celebrate inside this novel. I already talked about the way the story carried throughout the novel and I felt this was a big plus. The drama contained in the novel was a rollercoaster, having your highs and your lows and since this novel is centered on a family, it fit.   I really enjoyed the ending and there was no way, I would have ever predicted that ending to occur.

There was a lot going on in the novel but there were times when I felt time stood still. The grown children have all returned home as their lives have not panned out how they thought they would and now they have returned home to get themselves back on track. They noticed that their mother and father are not the affectionate people they used to be so they put a plan together to try to put the spark back into their parent’s marriage. Father is upset and frustrated. Alone, he feels that hope is obtainable in the future. Mother feels she is missing something in her life and wonders if this is the life that she was supposed to lead? Perhaps she missed something. A doubt grows in her mind and her mind wanders to what type of life she could have been leading all these years. It is time for mother’s yearly Christmas letter where she jots down her words, using happy, fictitious claims making the stories more glamorous than they really are, sending them off to all her family and friends. This year however she decides to type out the truth, the whole truth but before she can delete it she is called away and the words hang in there in cyberspace. Her husband sees her letter on the computer and he knows how important it is to her to send it off on a particular day, so he pushes the send button without reading one word of the letter. Yes, the truth is out there and it cannot be retrieved.

This novel was entertaining, filled with family drama that makes you think about your own family. Each character adds their own flair to the mix and they all strive to be a part of something bigger. Yet they are all part of a family, a unit that works together and stays together.