Hello friend! A new month is around the corner and I hope you have some fun things to look forward to in September! Today, as part of the blog tour organized by Over The River PR, I am sharing about Liz Parker’s latest novel, The Family Compound. A year back (time flies!) I enjoyed her debut novel, All Are Welcome (review link). I was looking for a light read with some solid drama to give my taxed brain some company and this was the perfect read! Take a look at the synopsis and then dive into my thoughts.
A compassionate and insightful novel about family, broken dreams, and holding on to everything in life that matters.
Five cousins must band together to decide the future of their shared inheritance—the family’s sprawling property in Stowe, Vermont—but with each at a different place in life, reaching a unanimous decision seems unlikely.
Penny struggles with depression and craves stability in an unstable world. Halsey is divorced, raising her child, and contending with an unexpected realization about herself. Irresponsible William can be counted on only to fall in love as capriciously as he falls out of it. And both Laurie and Chris are floundering after betrayals—hers professional, his personal. With little in common except childhood memories, the five face impossible choices. It’s going to take sacrifice, compromise, and a plan for moving forward they can all agree to. Until then, the fate of the Nolan family compound is as uncertain as their paths in life.
As five lives in flux converge and tensions run high, the cousins will have to rely on each other if they’re to have any hope of preserving the past. From the author of All Are Welcome comes a novel about a family legacy worth fighting for.
Content notes include grief, death of a parent, depression, and unemployment.
Thoughts on The Family Compound
If your family had a huge piece of land or an ancestral home and you inherited it, what would you do with it?
The Family Compound is the story of five cousins who are now responsible for the family’s sprawling property in Stowe, Vermont. They may have grown up together but since reaching adulthood, each cousin has made their separate path in life.
We have Halsey, the oldest, unemployed, single mother, who has to make room in her tight budget to keep the property going. Penny is the youngest. She was the one who found her dad in the garden and since his passing away, her unresolved past has resurfaced. Her support system seems minimal and she has to take charge of her life if she wants to keep the property. Laurie, Chris and William are the other cousins, ages between Halsey and Penny’s – each more independent than the last.
While The Family Compound touches on the lives of all the cousins, I felt that Penny and Halsey were the main perspectives – and good ones too! While all the cousins needed to grow in their own ways, the leap for these two needed the background that the author provided.
I liked how each cousin had different feelings related to the property based on their situation in life and the connection they had had with the place. The ones who had moved away weren’t so interested in keeping in and seemed to see it as a financial burden while those who called it home wanted it to stay that way. Halsey wanted her son to grow up there and she fought hard to make it so.
A property is not just for the people who live on it or own it. I appreciated the perspective that the family solicitor, Trevor, brought to the table. In trying to get the cousins to agree to a plan of action to keep the property, he had to put aside his personal relationships with them. Sometimes, he had to put his foot down.
Reading Experience Summary
If you are craving a fast-paced light read, give The Family Compound a try. It has a family drama and secrets which I quite enjoyed. It addresses the theme that life is always changing. Without any of the parents around, all the cousins had to step up and be adults. I enjoyed this perspective of how life constantly gives us opportunities for a fresh start if we are willing to take it.
Will you pick up this book? Find The Family Compound on Goodreads and Storygraph.
Many thanks to Over the River PR and the publisher for the gifted copy of the book for an honest review.
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