My Rating: 3.5 stars
When I first read the premise for this story, about a dysfunctional family quarantined together for seven days over the Christmas holiday, it sounded like it would be an interesting tale, albeit not a very original one. The Birch family must undergo a quarantine after the eldest daughter Olivia, a doctor, returns from a stint treating the deadly Haag virus in Liberia. Each member of the family has a different attitude toward the quarantine: the father Andrew, a restaurant critic for known for his sarcasm and dry wit, is accepting of the quarantine but unsure what to expect due to his rocky relationship with Olivia, a daughter he was never close with and hardly ever spoke to; the mother Emma, who hails from one of Britain's elite families, is the penultimate "loving wife and mother" and is delighted to have her eldest daughter back for her to dote on; Phoebe is the youngest sister, a woman in her twenties, engaged to be married, yet constantly acts like a defiant teen, self-centered, self-absorbed, and fiercely reliant on her parents to "take care of her" – having been the "only daughter" for so long due to Olivia rarely ever coming home, Phoebe resents her older sister for upending her life through having to go through this quarantine. All of them harbor secrets that they don't want other members of their family to find out and they go to great lengths to keep those secrets hidden, but this will prove to be a difficult task given that the family will have to spend the next seven days together in isolation, virtually cutoff from the outside world. Aside from the Birches, there are two other major characters who factor into the story – Phoebe's fiancé George, whom we find out from the getgo is essentially a jerk, and Andrew's long-lost son Jesse, a filmmaker from Los Angeles who takes the chance of traveling to Britain on a whim in the hopes of finally meeting his birth father. When both of these characters unexpectedly "crash" the Birches' quarantine, the result is chaos and drama, with one surprise after another threatening to turn this already dysfunctional family's lives upside down.
I would characterize this book as an "okay" read – it was entertaining and the story was engaging enough that I found myself wanting to turn the pages quickly so I could find out what happens to this family, even though, to be quite honest, I didn't really like any of the characters all that much (except for maybe Jesse, whom I found least annoying and maybe even borderline endearing). With that said though, I do appreciate that the author made the characters realistic, with each one having their flaws and personality quirks and making mistakes, not unlike people we may know in real life. The main issue I had with the book (hence the 3.5 rating) was in the predictability of the plot as well as the overabundance of "coincidences" which made the story overall a little less believable for me. There were a few situations that I felt were too contrived and some plot points that didn't really make sense, which detracted from the story a bit, for me at least. I also wasn't emotionally invested in any of the characters (probably because I disliked most of them), which made it hard for me to feel anything for the characters, even with some of the serious issues they go through. I actually felt a bit like an outsider looking in on this family and the various situations they were going through. Perhaps this is where the writing could have been tightened up a bit – like maybe make the situations less repetitive or add a little more depth to the story and the characters. It's kind of hard to explain – I really wanted to care about these characters, this family, but couldn't really get into it for some reason. One of the things I did like though was that each chapter was short and also narrated alternately by each of the characters, which made it a quick read while still being able to get a glimpse of each character's perspective.
Overall, this book was compulsively readable and entertaining, but a bit lacking in depth. There were quite a few very "serious" issues the book touched upon, but none of it dealt with in a heavy-handed manner, which I guess could be good or bad depending on the person reading the book. I personally preferred a little more depth but that's just me. This was still a relatively good book though -- a quick, light read that was engaging and even a bit fun at times, despite its dramatic undertones.
Received advance reader's copy from Berkley New York via Edelweiss
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