Fiction #10 in 2009 – The Kindness of Strangers by Katrina Kittle

The Kindness of Strangers by Katrina Kittle

From Publishers Weekly (amazon.com):

Master caterer Sarah Laden is barely holding her life together as a widow with two difficult sons—recalcitrant teen Nate and troubled fifth-grader Danny—when the unthinkable happens. Her best friend and neighbor, Courtney Kendrick, is arrested in a child sex abuse scandal. Courtney’s husband has vanished; their 11-year-old son, Jordan, is in the hospital recovering from a suicide attempt; and across the street Nate is finding, in Jordan’s backpack, evidence of unthinkable abuse. Kittle (Traveling Light; Two Truths and a Lie) crafts a disturbing but compelling story line, as Sarah, Nate and Jordan uncover and come to terms with the horror in alternating chapters. Sarah, for instance, is shocked to learn that she dropped off food for the Kendricks’ sex parties; Jordan must decide whether or not he wants to continue a relationship with his mother—who insists she’s innocent—if and when she gets acquitted. Kittle’s research sits awkwardly in expository dialogue—”One in four girls and one in six boys are sexually abused before their eighteenth birthdays,” intones the detective who will later become Sarah’s love interest—but it doesn’t slow the momentum. Though the movement is toward healing, there are bumpy roads ahead for everybody in this melodramatic but gripping read.

My thoughts:

• Similar to Testimony, this book is written from different characters’ perspective as well, but with less characters which made it less confusing. It also deals with a dark topic (a darker topic, if you ask me). I like this book better than Testimony because I think there are more to the characters. While the topic is horrifying, it wasn’t quite as disgusting as The Girl Next Door – nothing to do with the subject matter as both are equally disturbing, but just how the author presented it. Sometimes,  you just don’t need to be quite that explicit to get the message across.

• It is an engaging read, but I think the story could be shorter as it’s about 400 pages long. E.g. the prologue can be editted out.