Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsA gem of a book, warm and splendid tale about the power of love and connections.
Reviewed in the United States on June 11, 2018
House of Cry is an excellent book. It's rich with lyrical, smooth, crisp writing, has a compelling plot, intriguing characters, and just enough paranormal or magical realism to lift it from being a typical family drama.
Jenna is a cynical bartender who can't commit and has trouble with relationships except an endearingly close one with her younger sister, Cassie. Jenna and Cassie's mother--who was distant and often cold to the girls-- committed suicide when the girls were young, and in many ways they never recovered. One day as grown women, they go to look at a house that is for sell, and while there, Jenna falls through a portal that takes her to different worlds--including one where her mother didn't kill herself but is alive, healthy and loving toward Jenna. This is only the first of several alternative lives. As Jenna travels through other, parallel worlds, she meets most the same people over and over again, but owing to different choices that she or her mother have made, things play out differently. Through these alternative lives, Jenna learns some profound lessons, which she shares with the readers of this gem of a book.
In the hands of a less talented author, this multiple-world story line could have felt artificial or contrived, but Linda Bleser makes it all work just beautifully. The story moves so smoothly and naturally it never feels faked or contrived.
Effecting, thought-provoking, imaginative, beautifully written, sensitive, charming, and entertaining—a marvelous read. Though this is not a mystery or thriller, the manuscript has much of the same page-turning, what-happens-next quality to it that a good mystery has. Perhaps the mystery is the question throughout of what would finally happen to Jenna. A second mystery involves what the choice her mother made that in one life eliminated Cassie but produced a son.
The romance is well done. Jenna's love interest, Bob, crosses her paths in each world and allows Jenna to explore different aspects of the relationship. This could have easily gotten sappy, but thankfully, the story did not.
Perhaps the heart of the story isn’t so much the different worlds and the philosophical issues raised about choices, but relationships. Dominant of course is the loving relationship between Cassie and Jenna. But Jenna’s relationship with her mother—in all the different worlds—is also critical to the story, as is Jenna’s relationship with Bob and her best friend.
This is a warm and splendid book about the power of love and connections.