Book Review: Things We Didn’t Say by Kristina Riggle

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . May 25, 2011 . 8:45PM

Some people lead lives full of problems. In Things We Didn’t Say by Kristina Riggle, 26-year-old Casey has a mess of them. She’s engaged to Michael, a man 10-years her senior, who has three children with an ex-wife who is a non-recovering alcoholic with multiple mental disorders. Casey’s secrets come back to haunt her when Michael’s middle child, Dylan, disappears after being dropped off at school one day and his oldest child, Angel, finds Casey’s journal and reads it.

It’s infrequent that there are no sympathetic characters in a novel, but I feel like Ms. Riggle may have wanted it this way. The novel is often gritty and you can truly relate to Casey’s need to get away from the overbearing Michael who has not an ounce of empathy in his self-absorbed body. While Casey is the youngest adult in the novel, she’s often the most accepting and tolerant and I found myself wanting to leave this novel to get away from her situation. While they search for Dylan, Casey is forced to deal with Michael’s ex-wife, who is vilified in her need for her children and her oppositional use of them to get Michael back into her life. Casey, herself, seems at odds with her care for the children and her wanting of them to get away from her so she could have Michael to herself and this novel takes the wicked mother/exhausted-wicked stepmother idea to the edge of what it can possibly be without leaving reality.

Overall, this is not your beach read and it can be mentally exhausting at times. However, for those that are looking for a realistic portrayal of a difficult situation made more difficult by a crisis, this is going to hit all of the emotional buttons. My only catch was that the ending felt inauthentic to me, but the character wasn’t mine to choose her path.

Disclaimer: I received this book for free in order to review it! Thanks for letting me share my thoughts.