by Ann Patchett, 2016, Audiobook narrated by Hope Davis, HarperAudio

I was totally disappointed in this book!  Fortunately, we got this audiobook from the library so I didn’t pay anything for it other than wasted time.

The book is about two families where the spouses get divorced and marry each other.  It focuses on the children of the marriages and the effects of the disruption that this situation causes… or so I think.  After finishing the book, I now am unclear as to what it was about.

The one redeeming feature of this audiobook was the narrator, Hope Davis.  She did a really outstanding job capturing the voices of each of the characters.  One of the problems of the book, however, is that there are too many characters to keep track of and I gave up trying to figure out which one was which and which one I was supposed to focus on.

I actually didn’t mind listening to the book, at least until the end.  And what an ending!  It just ended; not in the middle of a sentence or paragraph, but almost.  I think the author finally realized that the book was totally pointless and she didn’t have any idea where it was going.  Better to just end it and that’s exactly what she did.  What a piece of work that was!

I just can’t imagine that an author of the apparent renown that Patchett enjoys would stoop to publishing such a novel.  I think it shows the current state of popular fiction that an author can get away with it.