Book 10/30.
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves.
The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another. It is this unshakable bond between them that both saves their lives and thwarts their futures.
The story, which moves back and forth in time through five decades, was okay albeit wayyy more interesting in the initial third of the book. The resolution of the story at the end of the novel was done well, but there was just wayyy too much uninteresting padding in between the initial third and the ending that made the story less enjoyable than it had the potential to be. But what I found far worse than the uninteresting padding was the characters, because other than Maeve all the main characters were quite unlikeable. The narrator, who was cute when he was a little boy and his naïve viewpoint was quite charming, grew up into such a self-absorbed piece of shit who was willfully oblivious to anything that had nothing to do with him. Out of all the unlikeable MCs in The Dutch House, I disliked the narrator most of all. And disliking a book because of its narrator does not tend to bode well for your reading experience, and this was no exception.
PS: What a gorgeous book cover 😍😍😍
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** A guide to ratings **
1 star – did not like it
2 stars – it was okay
3 stars – liked it
4 stars – really liked it
5 stars – it was amazing
Lwile the Leo 