Not a Happy Family

My Book of the Month selection for August was Not a Happy Family by Shari Lapena (the other options were Damnation Spring by Ash Davidson, The Inheritance of Orquidea Divina by Zoraida Cordova, The Heart Principle by Helen Hoang, and Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy). I discovered Lapena during the lockdown when reading was my biggest source of entertainment and she quickly became one of my favorite authors! I devoured every one of her books in one sitting so I was thrilled when her latest was an option this month! I eagerly anticipated getting my blue box delivered to my door and, just like the others, I read it in a single day!  Fred and Sheila Mercer are a wealthy couple living in a secluded and affluent neighborhood in the Hudson Valley. They invite their three adult children and their partners, Catherine and her husband Ted, Dan and his wife Lisa, and Jenna and her latest fling Jake, to dinner on Easter Sunday. Fred has been a cruel and vindictive father and Sheila has been a passive and disinterested mother so tensions are running high even before the dinner. Fred uses the occasion to profess his disappointment in each of them and to make a bombshell announcement. Two days later Fred and Sheila are discovered dead, the victims of an especially brutal homicide. At first, the police believe it is a robbery that turned violent but they soon come to suspect all three of the siblings. Each of them have a strong motive and, more importantly, none of them have an alibi for the time of the murders. Shocking secrets are revealed, circumstantial evidence is found to connect all three of them to the crime, and desperate siblings eventually turn on each other but which one of them killed their parents? The chapters are short and alternate between the POVs of multiple characters who are unsympathetic and unreliable so it is incredibly suspenseful. I could not put this book down because new revelations, that continually changed who I suspected, appear in almost every chapter and I had to keep reading. Lapena kept me guessing until the very end, which doesn't happen often, and the resolution is incredibly satisfying! The final sentence made me cheer out loud! As a huge fan of Lapena I think this might be her best yet and I definitely recommend it (as well as all of her other books) to fans of murder mysteries.