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Have you ever been wrong about someone?
Juno was wrong about Winnie Crouch.
Before moving in with the Crouch family, Juno thought Winnie and her husband, Nigel, had the perfect marriage, the perfect son—the perfect life. Only now that she’s living in their beautiful house, she sees the cracks in the crumbling facade are too deep to ignore.
Still, she isn’t one to judge. After her grim diagnosis, the retired therapist simply wants a place to live out the rest of her days in peace. But that peace is shattered the day Juno overhears a chilling conversation between Winnie and Nigel…
She shouldn’t get involved.
She really shouldn’t.
But this could be her chance to make a few things right.
Because if you thought Juno didn’t have a secret of her own, then you were wrong about her, too.
Source: borrowed from HooplaAudio
Wow. Just wow. This was one head-scratching WTF-ery kind of a plot twist. This is one of those stories where no one appears redeemable, save for Samuel, Winnie and Nigel's teenage son. That's because he's either on the periphery or in the middle with events happening around him, but he is definitely not the creator of all the strife. The Wrong Family has this hybrid bitter-melancholy-edgy-desperate tone that only intensifies as it continues.
Without giving much away, Winnie and her husband Nigel are having marital problems. They're emotionally distant from each other and seem to be operating on different wavelengths. It's hinted that an incident years ago affected their marriage and it hasn't recovered since. Samuel is the only thing keeping them together. Winnie was initially a sympathetic character but she turns unreliable and even erratic at times. Juno, who provides the other POV seems pretty normal, at least compared to the Crouches but then that initial perception of her is turned upside down as the plot progresses. She's highly observant having been a therapist so she's able to analyze the Crouches' behavior and sees how it affects Samuel. During one of Winnie and Nigel's arguments that Juno overhears, something is said out loud that alarms Juno.
I did not feel good as I read this. Everyone's behavior felt so icky and intrusive. If you're someone who's all about boundaries (I am that way), then you should be aware that boundaries are often crossed here. Part of me wondered if I really wanted to go on but I also wanted to see the story through. The plot descends into a deep, dark, nasty mess that leads to tragedy.
I will give Fisher this - she was good at setting out clues, and where Juno interpreted things one way, there'd be a rational explanation later from a different perspective. It just impressed upon me the danger in having only half the information and making assumptions from there. Juno's curiosity gets the better of her and with every intention of helping to right wrongs, she digs a little further, oblivious to the fact that in doing so she's setting off a sequence of events from which there's no turning back.
Would I recommend it? Sure, if you like the dark, twisty mysteries that unsettle you throughout. (I'm including CW/triggers at the bottom. In order to avoid spoilers, I've made it so that you have to highlight the section to see them.)
~ Bel
Note: It's now been a couple days since I finished it and I've had more time to ponder some of the details. I liked how Fisher set things up and l liked how she left the breadcrumbs that seduced Juno's inquisitiveness which really propelled both the speed and sinister nature of the storyline. And I guess in the aftermath I feel more pity for Winnie and Juno. The Wrong Family is my first novel by Tarryn Fisher and I'd certainly read another one of her books in the future.
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Content Warning/Triggers (highlight to read):
- multiple miscarriages (Winnie's memories), wanting to get pregnant again, counseling runaways/drug addicts (Winnie's previous job), child abduction (Winnie's involvement with one of her previous cases), degenerative disease (Juno), homelessness (Juno), alcoholism and drug abuse (Winnie's brother), marital problems, almost infidelity (Nigel), murder, child death
