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The family in this story, the Mertons, although wealthy, are not a happy family. Their holiday dinners get very messy indeed. The pace is fast, the plotline was a bit predictable and the characters are well developed and believable. I really enjoyed this book even though I had already guessed the ending. It's full of twists but some parts are uncomfortable to read. I liked the authors writing style, it makes the book easy to read. Bina and Deepak Joshi came to America to start over and welcome new opportunities into their lives. Bina ia a little resentful of leaving a flourishing acting career but settles into her role as the matriarch of the household-settle being being the operative word-as she supports Deepak's journey to becoming a psychiatrist in America.
Happy Family by Saumya Dave: 9781984806178 What a Happy Family by Saumya Dave: 9781984806178
Great on audio narrated by Soneela Nankani and highly recommended for fans of Sonali Dev, Sara Desai, Annika Sharma or Sajni Patel. This book also has excellent mental health rep, focusing on the stigma of seeking therapy or admitting to any kind of mental illness among members of South Asian families, and in particular medical professionals. Watching Beth’s life come tumbling down, I felt really sorry for her. As I have seen with many characters in similar stories, Beth turns to excessive amounts of alcohol, in the attempt to numb the pain of what is happening. However, this just leads to distorted memories and that Beth no longer trusts what she believes. It’s a terrible cycle and I was desperate for Beth to find the answers to why she thought someone is watching her. I really enjoyed this messy Indian American multigenerational family story featuring the Joshis of Atlanta. Told in alternating perspectives among the three grown Joshi siblings and their parents, we get to know their secrets, fears and struggles as they try to live up to entrenched cultural expectations.The blurb tells you everything you need to know about the plot, anything I would add would definitely be counted as spoilers which I avoid, and it really does cover the key points and had me intrigued to read at any rate. Happy Families is your definitive guide to understanding your child's mental health, so they can survive and thrive. Whether you're afraid that anxiety is controlling your child's life, struggling with getting your child out of a low mood cycle, or you just want support on how to communicate with them, this book is here to help. This book was everything I ever wanted. I don’t think I’ve ever been this connected and seen by a book before. I’m so grateful to have received an arc of this book because I could talk about it all day long and will be raving it about it until and after its release. To dive into the contents, this is a story about a family that each have their own personal problems whether that’s in their careers, mental health, relationships, etc. It’s told from a multi-person perspective which I as a reader love because I enjoy getting to be in the heads of everyone and see the depth of why they act the way they do. Billy Beal managed to talk his parents into keeping the baby ---( better than being assigned a ward of the state). This was only temporary. This book was not for me. First, it had body shaming in it. That is a big no-no, and I really, really wish the character involved would have said, "I'm a real woman. I've had children. This is what a real body looks like." Instead, the character just felt guilty and self conscious. Second, the portrayal of the MC was nauseating. She was acting entirely silly and non-sensical, ignoring perfectly obvious signs and things that were wrong. She also let her ex run all over her, allowing him to take the kids, yell at her, burst into her home when he felt like it. That's not how things work these days. One parent cannot just unilaterally terminate a parent's rights. The MC talks about how she and her ex get along great. If that is the case, he should respect some boundaries. Third, the book was so entirely predictable. I guessed the ending very early on. Fourth, the pacing was really off. Typically, I tend to enjoy slower paced books, but this was just too slow even for me. The storytelling just was not there. The Happy Family did not seem to build in anticipation, and there was far too much foreshadowing.
a Happy Family - Happy Families - Redbook How to Be a Happy Family - Happy Families - Redbook
The family has gathered for the annual Easter dinner, hosted by Fred and Sheila, and patriarch Fred has an announcement to make. Poor Dan, is the mentally and emotionally weakest link of the trio. He reminds me of Successions’ Kendall a lot. His father targeted him from the beginning, abusing mentally and psychically, selling the company he’d worked hard for and left him penniless and unemployed. And his last unfortunate business investment left him high and dry. The father of the year rejects to borrow him money, humiliating him in front of everyone, pleasing to watch him squirming in pain. Being middle child and only boy must be toughest. He’s none of his parents’ favorite, left excluded and has every right to reflect years long boiled anger in different ways. Could he be the killer? Why not?
Tracy Barone's Happy Family is an emotional and sometimes humorous book about how growing up in the midst of dysfunction can only prepare you for more dysfunction in adulthood. It's also a book about finding strength in difficult times, and how life has a way of surprising you, both positively and negatively. The description of the book led me to believe it would be more about Cheri's birth mother and the foster family that took her in when she was an infant, but their impact is felt only briefly at the start and end. The night ends early, with everyone leaving a bit disgruntled. Ahhh, dinners with family, am I right? The family here makes so much sense, you just sink right into it. It's not hard to see how the different personalities and relationships have come together. Really my biggest quibble is that I didn't entirely buy Natasha. Some things about her just didn't totally make sense to me, and she's the central character if there is one. She wants a career in comedy, she has apparently done all this research, but she also thinks that what will be basically her first time doing real stand up is going to open up doors when comedy is the longest of slogs felt weird. I also couldn't ever imagine her relationship with Karan, he seems far too boring for her, especially for so many years. I also (sorry) did not find her funny, which made the comedy segments of the book fall flat. It was a bummer because there are many other parts of her that were really grounded and relatable, so the ones that didn't quite fit were more noticeable. My first cousin was adopted. She is the oldest child of 4 kids. She grew up in Piedmont, Calif. - A Jewish family. Shelley and I are the same age and have been close since little kids with many crazy adventure stories. I know about some of the suffering she went through being the only child - adopted -in my aunt and uncles family --- When Beth’s long-lost mother abruptly turns up on her doorstep, Beth asks no questions, instead seeking the relationship that she has craved for so many years. Keen to see her a part of the family, Beth encourages her mum to stay in the family home for the long-term so that she and Beth can catch up after such a long absence. Beth is delighted that her children respond so positively to their grandmother and when Alice announces that Beth also has a step-sister, it is like the dream of a properly family is suddenly coming true.
The Happy Family by Jackie Kabler | Goodreads
The Mertons, a wealthy couple from upstate New York, are brutally murdered in their palatial home after hosting a contentious family Easter dinner. Through Cheri, the reader learns of her life through her first forty years. Everything she does thwarts Cici's plans. She is a complex character as she comes of age. From hippie to the NYPD to an expert in an arcane field, she is fiercely independent even after she marries. The "Chats over Chai" fiasco is so overblown. It's a glorified kitty party group with a bunch of aunties gossiping, and I can't imagine Bipin wasting so much of his precious time on tearing down such an insignificant gatheringBut that’s all in the past. Life is looking up for Beth. She got to keep her large house after the divorce, has an amicable relationship with her ex husband, and a close circle of friends among her colleagues at the health centre and her neighbours. Suhani is their oldest child. She's beautiful, accomplished, and seemingly perfect and has followed in her father's footsteps as a psychiatrist. However, a dark secret from her past emerges, threatening to derail her marriage and her career. If you don't have a built-in network, Haltzman suggests creating your own support system through volunteering, joining the PTA or a book club, participating in religious services, or simply reaching out to your neighbors. Alison Miller, 38, a mother of two in Chicago, has been getting together with eight other families in her neighborhood every Friday for the last seven years. The get-togethers started out as a playgroup for the moms and their first babies and evolved into a weekly dinner party that includes their husbands and 16 children. "We have formed an unlikely and remarkable community," Miller says. "I know that I can always count on these women for anything I need."
Not a Happy Family by Shari Lapena | Goodreads Not a Happy Family by Shari Lapena | Goodreads
Other than Cheri always had a distant relationship with her father, Sol. She has a problem at work...( oh, but you'll love the lecture she gives in a university class - even though Cheri is more interested in research than teaching). She has challenges with her mother, with her husband Michael, many failed artificial inseminations, and struggles with the secrets she knows about her parents. However, ( for pure pleasure reading), Cheri's field of study is very cool - and the entire chapter explaining the project she is interested in is fascinating! The narrative is thoroughly propulsive, and Dave writes intelligently about the universality of shame, disappointment, and living to please others while simultaneously sharing the unique experiences of a first-generation Desi family.” — Publishers Weekly This story is overflowing, there is so much happening that starts in abandonment. There are different issues- religion, being a foreigner, being adopted, love that fades, love that consumes, loss, lies, evasion, trying to protect those you love from brutal reality, endings, beginnings... What is identity exactly? Is it necessary to grow into the skin our family has passed down to us or is it better to shed it and sew our own? Do you ever really escape your biological make-up, or does it simply rise to the surface. Good thing is that it was easy to read, but a bad thing is that it was too repetitive, so many things that were already said were mentioned again and again... Suhani, Natasha and Anuj are the American children of Indian immigrants Deepak, a psychiatrist like his oldest daughter Suhani, and Bina, a former Bollywood actress with a promising career cut short and a prominent member of her local Desi community in Atlanta, Georgia. The three children have all faced different pressures from different aspects of their parents and surrounding community.Barone is a tremendously talented writer, and I found myself so wrapped up in the plot of the book that I honestly didn't realize how good she was until I read a paragraph near the end of the book which made me gasp. I re-read that and then started noticing Barone's almost-poetic style in some places. Cheri is a fascinating, flawed character; this is her book, and some of the other characters paled in comparison to her. (Cheri's mother almost never transcended a stereotypical Italian immigrant, clinging fast to her old-school ways and customs despite being in the U.S. for many years.) There are several themes - which tie together. At the beginning a baby girl is born and abandoned, in New Jersey. A young High School kid, a baseball fan- It’s a reasonable enough, (though not especially novel) plot but it’s dragged down by the repetitive nature of the narrative and the glaringly obvious solution to the various twists and turns. Incredulous naivety A bright new voice in women’s fiction.” —Emily Giffin, New York Times bestselling author of The Lies that Bind Throughout the story, THE HAPPY FAMILY is, of course, anything but. But the mystery, the suspense, the tension...oh, it was a car crash moment. We simply couldn't look away. We were baited in the beginning then slowly drawn in and by this stage were well and truly hooked as we witness Beth's slow decline into self doubt and self destruction.
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