Daughters-in-Law
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3.7 • 16 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
An elegant, wry, and superbly nuanced story about a woman with three sons—and three daughters in law—who must come to terms with the new configuration of her family.
As Anthony and Rachel Brinkley welcome their third daughter-in-law to the family, they don’t quite realize the profound shift that is about to take place. For different reasons, the Brinkleys’ two previous daughters-in-law hadn’t been able to resist Rachel’s maternal control and Anthony’s gentle charm and had settled into their husbands’ family without rocking the boat.
But Charlotte—very young, very beautiful, and spoiled—has no intention of falling into step with the Brinkleys and wants to establish her own household. Soon Rachel’s sons begin to think of their own houses as home and of their mother’s house as simply the place where their parents live—a necessary and inevitable shift of loyalties that threatens Rachel’s sense of herself, breaks Anthony’s heart, and causes unexpected consequences in all the marriages. Then a crisis brings these changes to the surface, and everyone has to learn what family love means all over again.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Short on plot but long on emotion, Trollope's latest (after The Other Family) is a straightforward take on the ways we shape and reshape our idea of family. Though her three sons are grown and married, Rachel is unwilling to let go of her role at the center of their lives, much to the dismay of her daughters-in-law. Responsible Edward, the eldest, feels the burden of being the good son, but his consuming roles as son and brother are jeopardizing his relationship with his own wife, Sigrid, who sacrificed her relationship with her family in Sweden to build a life with him. Rachel and her husband coddled their middle son, Ralph, even matchmaking him with fragile Petra, whose marriage is made uneasy by the large role Ralph's family has in their life. And willful Charlotte quickly finds herself at odds with Rachel after her marriage to youngest son Luke, when Charlotte challenges Rachel's hold on the family's habits. Though genuinely caring, the characters slight each other as they tumble toward individual crises. There's nothing groundbreaking, but it's a decent fix for family drama addicts.
Customer Reviews
Boring
I was so bored. I could not wait to finish this book...