The Wrong Family by Ellery A. Kane
Actual Rating: 2
Thank you NetGalley and the publishers/authors for a free audiobook copy in exchange for an honest review.
I’ve read a few reviews that basically say that the synopsis for this book doesn’t match its actual contents, and I pretty much agree. The synopsis paints a very sinister picture:
After years of searching for her biological father, she finally hears back of a DNA match. Robert Thompson is dependable and welcoming, inviting Hallie to his family’s lake house, where she finally gets to see what a functional family looks like for the first time. But then things start to go wrong — a slashed bridge, a tampered car, a stolen necklace, a vandalized painting…and then Hallie finds out that there was a mistake, that Robert isn’t actually her father. That last sentence of the blurb, that Hallie was “trapped,” is what puts the finishing touches on my expectations, and I went into this expecting a psychological thriller.
Instead, she wasn’t trapped by any means, and (spoiler alert) the Thompsons weren’t the antagonists at all. The plot turned out to feel quite anticlimactic, as I didn’t care much about the drama of the backstory.
I think the plot wouldn’t have bothered me so much if it had been marketed originally that way, perhaps as a contemporary drama instead. Still, it wasn’t a dealbreaker — I was still pretty curious about how the story would end.
I think the characters were the weakest part of the book. None of the side characters were very likable, and Natalie in particular felt like a complete parody of what adults think teenagers acts like. She seemed shallow from beginning to end; there’s little, if any, character development on her part.
However, I had an even bigger issue with Hallie and reading the story from her perspective. She was, simply put, an extremely frustrating protagonist. I have nothing against imperfect characters — in fact, they’re what makes character development possible and stories interesting. Hallie’s perspective, however, was just really repetitive. Throughout the book her narration is interspersed with woe-is-me comments about her backstory every few lines. Her unlikeability and constantly poor decision-making makes the ending feels unearned, and I was also not that invested in the cooking plot to care about how it turned out.
Overall, the writing style was fine. The plot has potential here, and I liked the letters from all the Robert Thompsons that were interspersed between chapters. Perhaps with better-liked characters I’d have felt more invested overall.
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