House of Wonder
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3.7 • 6 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
When we were little and I needed Warren, I would rub my earlobe. And perhaps it was the alchemy of childhood, a magic that happened because I believed it could, but I swear it worked. He always came.
Theirs wasn’t always the misfit family in the neighborhood. Jenna Parsons’s childhood was one of block parties and barbecues, where her mother, a former beauty queen, continued her reign and her twin brother, Warren, was viewed as just another oddball kid. But as her mother’s shopaholic habits intensified, and her brother’s behavior became viewed as more strange than quirky, Jenna sought to distance herself from them. She is devoted to her career and her four-year-old daughter, Rose. But now, in his peculiar way, Warren summons her back to 62 Royal Court.
What she finds there—a house in disrepair, a neighborhood on tenterhooks over a rash of petty thefts, and evidence of past traumas her mother has kept hidden—will challenge Jenna as never before. But as she stands by her family, she also begins to find beauty in unexpected places, strength in unlikely people, and a future she couldn’t have imagined.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jenna has been running a design firm and independently raising a child; her twin brother, Warren, has been living with their mother and delivering pizza at the overripe age of 37. In Royal Court, the neighborhood in suburban New Jersey they call home, houses are for sale but no one is buying. Mysterious break-ins have the neighborhood gossiping, and Jenna's mother pleads for Jenna to spend time at the family home. After returning to Royal Court, Jenna suspects the shabby state of the house is not the real reason her mother wants her company this becomes apparent after Warren comes home brutally beaten. Soon, the police are on their doorstep, and her brother is linked to the string of petty thefts in the neighborhood. In order for Jenna to keep her family together, she must accept the truth about her brother and mother. The story's realism is believable and the prose is solid, but Healy's (Can I Get an Amen?) loosely crafted characters lead generic emotional lives that play out in the confines of a generic suburban drama.
