Part of the Family

WHAT WOULD YOU SACRIFICE TO UNCOVER THE TRUTH?

ISBN 0008327025
(ISBN13: 9780008327026)

On the surface, Anna Witherall personifies everything the aspirational magazine she works for represents. Married to her university boyfriend David, she has a beautiful home and gorgeous three-year-old twin daughters, Stella and Rose. But beneath the veneer of success and happiness, Anna is hiding a dark secret, one that threatens to unravel everything she has worked so hard to create.
As Anna finds herself drawn into the dark and highly controlled world of secret intelligence, she is forced to question her family’s safety, and her own. Only one thing is certain: in order to protect her children, she must leave them, forever. 
And someone is watching. Someone she thought she could trust. Someone who is determined to make them all pay.
Stylish and assured, The Most Difficult Thing is an irresistible combination of contemporary espionage and domestic suspense, and a compulsive, highly charged examination of betrayal.

400 pages

Published April 16 2020

(The Borough Press)

First Impression

Set in 1st person Part of the Family is a slow paced story giving the accounts of Anna and Maria in three parts.

Through a prologue we are given an insight into the afternoon of a woman later found out to be Anna, 2 month after giving birth being out shopping on her own. Maria is described as the Ever-compentant nanny of her twins. 

3 years (chapter one) 05:40 having another night where she has hardly sleep Anna gets up quietly as not to disturb her husband, david. An hour later, she is ready for her to leave to catch up on work before her 12pm flight, having kissed her girls goodbye, all that is left is to walk through the open door.

My Rating ⭐

There are a lot of mixed reviews about Part of the Family so I was starting with an open-mind.

The first thing that comes to mind is how confusing the story is, there were lots of flashbacks leaving  more questions than answers eg. The prologue is 2 months after Anna gave birth, chapter one 3 years into the future then chapter 3 is when she was a teen. 

I found it odd and increasingly difficult to get a clear picture on what is happening some pages made me question why I chose Part of the Family. 

Through the changing plot twists I struggled to from a connection to any characters and any time start to like a character something happened for me to change my mind.

It took long than expected to read, and I left feeling disappointed at a whole the ending for me was flat and felt rushed.

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