The Family Inside

Overwrought and ultimately unbelievable domestic thriller.

A poor and frumpy woman is courted by a really handsome, wealthy man. Iris is a widow (her husband was murdered) and she has an 18 year old daughter. Iris loses her job and is evicted from their home. Hugh sweeps in to take Iris and her daughter to a mansion he lives in with his mother. His brother, sister-in-law, and sister live there too. And then this really goes off the rails into territory that is so convoluted and twisty that not even the most dedicated reader could manage to suspend enough disbelief to keep up.

The characters were all stereotypes and the plot contained enough tropes and cliches for several books. The main character, Iris, was the most ridiculous of all. She basically is also not very smart along with being histrionic.

I really didn't want to finish this. I hate to say it because this was an ARC given to me by the publisher, but this book was a hot mess and I couldn't give it more stars.

If the writing and narrative weren't already bad enough, I was also listening to the audio book while following along in the e-book. The narrators' voices were so cringey and grating that I finally had to turn it off. Generally the accompanying audio production enhances my enjoyment of a book but this time it made me dislike it even more.

Sometimes you start a book hoping for the best and then find out as you get into it that it is not anything like what you had anticipated. This is where I was at when I got several chapters in. So many things were happening that were just so out there that it made me feel that the author thought the reader was dumb. And the ending just didn't fit everything about Iris that had been shown.