She Treads Softly: Meet the Parents

Sunday, August 25, 2024

Meet the Parents

Meet the Parents by Emily Shiner
8/28/24; 298 pages
Bookouture

Meet the Parents by Emily Shiner is a very highly recommended, un-put-downable fast-paced psychological thriller.

Owen, 41, is bringing home his girlfriend Gina, 28, to meet his parents, Grant and Marta Whitlock. Their cabin in the woods is actually a mansion on a sprawling estate. Marta immediately is hostile to Gina and Grant has wandering eyes. None of this really matters because they all privately know something about who the other person really is and what they are capable of doing behind their facade. The extent of what they'll do and what they know will be determined. Readers will know from the start only two people are going to survive, but which two is in question.

Meet the Parents is really a compelling, delicious cat-and-mouse page-turner that held my complete attention from start to finish. The narrative follows the present day get together, which is told through the alternating voice of Gina or Marta. Gina's past trauma is told through separate chapters set in the past when she was 8 years-old. The flashback chapters explain Gina's past trauma. The characters of Gina and Marta receive the most development.

This is a twisty psychological thriller right up to the end. The final denouement went a bit over-the-top, but the experience getting there was completely entertaining. Thanks to Bookouture for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.