We All Love the Beautiful Girls by Joanne Proulx

One frigid winter night, Mia and Michael Slate's comfortable world dissolves in an instant when they discover that their best friend has cheated them out of their life savings. At the same time, a few doors down, their teenaged son passes out in the snow at a party--a mistake whose consequences will shatter not just their family, but an entire community.  

In this arresting, masterful page-turner shot through with fierce, clear-eyed compassion and a sublime insight into human fragility, award-winning novelist Proulx explores the savage underpinnings of betrayal, infidelity, and revenge--and a multilayered portrait of love, in all its glory, that no reader will soon forget.

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing | Genre: Literary Fiction | Source: Publisher | Rating: 1 Cup

 

I wanted to like this book—and I thought I would—but this one, sadly, was one of those nails down a chalkboard books. If I would have been able to care about just one of the characters, things might have been different but I couldn’t find anything I liked about any of them.

 

The book’s basically about two couples and their children unraveling due to their own stupidity. Michael’s allowed his best friend and business partner, Peter, to steal his company out from under him because he was too stupid to read the paperwork before he signed it. Mia’s now working to get some of the business back while carrying out an affair. All the while, they’re so wrapped up in their own lives that they have no idea what their children are up to—which, mainly involves getting stoned, getting drunk, and sleeping around with each other—and now Finn will bear the consequences for the rest of his life prompting his father, Michael, to take revenge.

 

I thought this book would be dark and angst-driven where I would feel the emotion of the characters but it ended up being rather lackluster.

 

I was pretty much done with this book by the third chapter but I kept reading hoping it would get better or I would find a spark of something to care about but it ended up being a futile effort. It was hard to feel sorry for a group of people who were caught in webs of their own making.

 

Overall, I didn’t really find anything in this book to recommend it. It was a lot of people making stupid choices that led to even stupider results.