The Wrong Family by Tarryn Fisher

 

I really enjoy Tarryn Fisher's books, even though they all kind of have a "samey" vibe to them. You know what I mean. The plot of every Tarryn Fisher book ever can basically be summed up like this:

F***ed up individual meets another f***ed up individual and then reader discovers that FUI #1 has been grossly downplaying how f***ed up they actually are to FUI #2. But FUI #2 has also been grossly downplaying how f***ed up they are to FUI #1.

Both FUIs become suspicious of each other, and the suspense builds, only for the reader to find out that FUI #1 and FUI #2 are BOTH F***ED UP INDIVIDUALS... BUT in a COMPLETELY different kind of f***ed up way than we, the reader, have been led to believe.

And you know what? That's exactly what happened in this book.

THE WRONG FAMILY is about the Crouch family: Winnie, Nigel, and Sam. On the surface, they're basically your average boring WASP-y family, but all of them have secrets, and Winnie's might just be enough to rip the threads of the family apart. Add to that a dysfunctional brother-in-law who's self-medicating his issues with alcohol, and you've got a ripe recipe for disaster.

But there's one more narrator, and that's Juno. Juno is staying with the family too, but not with their knowledge. She's a homeless lady who's made herself right at home, and before she lost everything, she used to be a therapist, so she's decided that maybe she knows what the family is hiding and how to fix their problems. Orrrr she might just make everything worse. Your guess is as good as hers.

A lot of people are hating on this story but I actually liked it. It's got a mean-spirited, defeatist view on humanity that I actually see a lot in German mysteries and thrillers, particularly Herman Koch (an author I LOVE that a lot of Americans hate because he writes despicable and unlikable characters really, really well). I personally don't mind reading about unlikable characters as long as they are interesting and the author wrote them that way intentionally. Here, it definitely feels intentional, and I found myself engrossed in the deconstruction of two very different sets of lives, through a set of very unwise choices that ended up having a magnifying effect.

No, this isn't like Fisher's other, smutty thrillers, but I ended up liking it anyway.

3 to 3.5 out of 5 stars