The Book: Somebody Else’s Daughter, by Elizabeth Brundage
The Story: The back of the book says that this book is about two drifters, Nate and Cat, who have a daughter, Willa, and are forced to give her up for adoption. The couple that adopts her is a wealthy couple who are sending Willa to a fancy-pants school. When Willa is 16 or 17, Nate ends up teaching English at the school that Willa goes to. Fatherly-drama ensues.
That is partly what the book is about, but just reading that did not prepare me in anyway for what actually went down. We’re talking serious drugs, murder, prostitution, molestation, pornography and that is just the tip of the iceberg. I’m not complaining, I can deal with these issues in a book, it was just totally shocking because the book description didn’t prepare readers for that at all.
The story partly revolves around Willa, but really there are about 5 or 6 other stories that are happening in the wings that get an equal amount of play. Teddy, a boy that she is sort of crushing on, is involved with a drug addicted prostitute. So is Mr. Heath, the head of Teddy and Willa’s school. Mr. Heath must just have a thing for little girls, because he also messes around with Willa. Teddy’s mom, Chloe, is messing around with Joe Golding, Willa’s adopted father. Did I mention that Joe runs a porn business? And that his wife tried her hand in the porn business for a little while? Joe starts feeling guilty, so Chloe moves on to Nate, Willa’s biological father. Just these kind of crazy antics. I didn’t even really get started… or tell you who got murdered. Oh, mysteries, mysteries.
What I Thought: I started this book, got about 150 pages in and got bored. Or confused. There were ALL these characters introduced right off the bat and I was just overwhelmed. I let it kind of marinate in my mind while it sat on my bookshelf and I read a bunch of other books. When I came back to it, I seriously read the last 200 pages in just a couple of sittings. I felt like it took this book a little while to gain steam, but once it did it really took off.
Seriously, though, the stuff I talked about in the summary is pretty graphic. I wasn’t expecting this at all and I was completely shocked. There are graphic sex scenes, and not just “normal” sex. Some pretty wild stuff. I was blown away. So, there’s that. Now that I think about it, I remember thinking this exact same thing about this author’s other book The Doctor’s Wife. Maybe that is just her “thing.” Hm.
My only real complaint is that with ALL these stories going on and all these lives intersecting it is hard to really get into any of them. As soon as I would get intrigued with one, it would move on to the next. They tie together well at the end, but until then it just came off as a bit choppy.
Conclusion: Really not a bad book. A pretty interesting story once you get all the characters straight, but not for the faint of heart. Deals with some pretty serious, pretty graphic stuff.