Book Review: Everything We Ever Wanted
Everything We Ever Wanted: A Novel by Sara Shepard
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
Sylvie Bates-McAllister is a wealthy widow and mother of two grown sons. When she gets a phone call that her younger son Scott may be involved in a hazing scandal at the private school where he coaches wrestling and she is on the board, she and her family are thrown into a panic.
I thought this book moved way too slowly and had a lot of moments that were supposed to be very dramatic that didn’t feel authentic to me. Everyone got worked up about the hazing scandal way too quickly – one phone call and everyone went nuts without knowing any details at all – before any formal investigation or charges were brought. An autopsy on the boy that died hadn’t even been done.
The characters were all very one-dimensional, especially Scott. Sylvie and her late husband adopted Scott when he was a toddler. He is biracial (African-American and white) and Sylvie and the rest of the family are white. Scott’s character is such a stereotype of the urban, angry black man that I was actually angry myself (at the author) as I was reading the book. I think (and hope) that the author’s intent was to show that he was more than that on the inside but that no one gets to know him well enough to figure that out. However, if that was indeed her intent, she did not do a very good job.
The story took a weird turn about three-fourths of the way in and some of the storylines were just dropped with no resolution at all. The way Sylvie’s storyline ended was totally out of left field and left me scratching my head.
Sara Shepard is also the author of the Pretty Little Liars series which I haven’t read but gather must be quite popular since it’s been made into a TV series. Only having read this particular book by Shepard, I can’t see myself reading any of her other books.
This book comes out today. You can buy it at:
Amazon
(I received this book courtesy of LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers program.)
