Review: Safe Keeping By: Barbara Taylor Sissel

Safe Keeping by Barbara Taylor Sissel
My rating: 3 of 5 stars


****** This is a First Reads, Thank You Goodreads *****

I think 2 1/2 stars would be more accurate in my rating to be fair.

The story surrounds a family in Texas; Emily, the matriarch, who has her own pains and regrets in life as she blindly carries and sweeps her family's clean or bakes her way in a false stepford smile; Roy, the patriarch, wounded in war, came back with ptsd, did damage to his family in more ways than one, the night terrors sometimes keep in the day, questions was it all worth the pain; Emily, the daughter, the oldest, the one who has kept things running, married right, keeps the company going along with her husband, blindly loyal; Evan, Emily's husband, the son that never was, the silent strength; Tucker, the son, the lost child, the one who in one of his father's moments became an enemy and never grew out of it, and the one who is now the suspect in a murder - again.

Can lightning strike twice and it still be a mistake? Tucker is the suspect again in a murder of woman, another one he knew, another one found where the last one was, in the same fashion of death. Why does this keep happening? Can't people see what the rest of the family can? That he is good, that he is kind, that he has emotional problems that make him wonder off for days, but he is also the type of person the would spend his paycheck on saving a dog that was run over on the side of the road that he found. This is where the nightmare only begins for the Lebay Family, with their family history with each other and with the small town secrets that slowly creep up there are a bit of twists and turns.

Why only 2 1/2 stars - I didn't connect with any of the characters. I struggled to keep reading and finish the book, which thankfully I did, because finally 250 pages in is when the action began and it got exciting - sadly that left only 50 pages to wrap it up, which was plenty. There was a disconnect that not only I felt with the characters, but they had with each other, everything seemed very surface - a facade of love, of care, of a marriage, of a relationship with each other, I don't know if that was the author's intent.



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