A Nearly Normal Family
A Novel
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4.1 • 387 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Now a Netflix Limited Series
"...A compulsively readable tour de force." —The Wall Street Journal
New York Times Book Review recommends M.T. Edvardsson’s A Nearly Normal Family and lauds it as a “page-turner” that forces the reader to confront “the compromises we make with ourselves to be the people we believe our beloveds expect.” (NYTimes Book Review Summer Reading Issue)
M.T. Edvardsson’s A Nearly Normal Family is a gripping legal thriller that forces the reader to consider: How far would you go to protect the ones you love? In this twisted narrative of love and murder, a horrific crime makes a seemingly normal family question everything they thought they knew about their life—and one another.
Eighteen-year-old Stella Sandell stands accused of the brutal murder of a man almost fifteen years her senior. She is an ordinary teenager from an upstanding local family. What reason could she have to know a shady businessman, let alone to kill him?
Stella’s father, a pastor, and mother, a criminal defense attorney, find their moral compasses tested as they defend their daughter, while struggling to understand why she is a suspect. Told in an unusual three-part structure, A Nearly Normal Family asks the questions: How well do you know your own children? How far would you go to protect them?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Swedish author Edvardsson make his U.S. debut with an ambitious novel that focuses on the question: What would one do to save one's child from the consequences of a horrible crime? Rebellious 18-year-old Stella Sandell has a violent temper and a penchant for getting into trouble, reflecting a need to defy her overprotective father, Adam, a Church of Sweden pastor in the town of Lund. When Stella is arrested for the murder of her lover, 33-year-old Christopher Olsen, a criminal law professor's son with a checkered past, Adam and his lawyer wife, Ulrika, go to great lengths to help their troubled daughter. Edvardsson uses first-person narratives from Adam, Stella, and Ulrika to tell the story of the family, the crime, and the trial. This structure adds complexity and ambiguity, but the three different versions of the events result in too much repetition, dampening the suspense and weakening the denouement. This novel works better as a domestic drama than as a mystery.
Customer Reviews
Good legal story
I enjoyed this book and I liked the structure where the narrator switches characters. The ending was also satisfying.
Off topic: The only thing I find UNFORTUNATE is the fact someone decides to review the book here, but instead of providing generic feedback; thus individual opts to review the entire story—spoilers and all. Doing stuff like that is selfish and robs the experience of someone being able to enjoy the book. Quite frankly, there should never be a reason why a person should need to describe the ENTIRE story. Or at the very least, be kind and announce “Spoiler Alert” at the beginning of your review.
My 2 cents...
A remarkable book of 2 best friends who find themselves in harrowing circumstances
The loyalty and bond between Amina and Stella, two girls who were Olaf opposites yet shared a bond that is rare, true and love as family members.
As Stella, the more adventurous and non conformist of the two often struggles with authority, being commanded and dictated to following rules, Amina is the good girl, who meets every goal she’s set for herself and future and can effortlessly speak to her best friend to reel her back from thrill seeking, destructive and not always decisions that will help her when she meets a very older man.
Amina met him first, however he begins to spin his last relationship with his ex as her stalking tormenting and filing false police reports about his physical mental sexual and emotional abuse. His Mon is well known in the legal system and he is soon let go for lack of enough evidence.
When this woman, Linda his ex tries to warn Stella, she feels a bit Of doubt, sickening feelings regarding her but because he lays on his feelings for her so thick, he’s taken her on planes, limos and used his wealth to very much impress her.
Linda the ex keeps pleasing for Stella to get out. Giving her horrible graphic examples of what he’s going to slowly surely start to do to her and when little and then major flags begin to catch her attention she wants out.
He lures has bf who is. A virgin to his appt to surprise Stella for her birthday and ends up raping her. Stella believes it because while she is waiting for him to come home, and the fact Amina isn answering. Her cell she KNOWS something is terribly wrong. She soon sees Amina running from him, she’d sprayed him already with pepper and while screaming for her bf Stella to run, Stella sees the knife- as Amina pushes it into his stomach and then another on. It is then Stella takes the knife she also gives him 2 good stab wound they leave him to bleed out.
The saga that plays out while Stella is remanded, the rest of the tragic and devastating abuse and manipulation these girls were enduring comes out in court!
Repetitive, unbelievable in a most immature way
I can’t even think of finishing this, it’s mind numbingly simple immature and characters are embarrassingly shallow.