Laura Wiess

They promised Meredith nine years of safety, but only gave her three.

Her father was supposed to be locked up until Meredith turned eighteen. She thought she had time to grow up, get out, and start a new life. But Meredith is only fifteen, and today her father is coming home from prison.

Today her time has run out.

I finished it in one sitting at my job (I'm a receptionist at my university's library) so all I really do is catch up on my reading. This book from the first sentence up until the very last, really captivated me. Weiss has a very fluid, familiar voice that I haven't come across in a long time. This book made me so very angry, and so overjoyed at the same time. I clung so close to Meredith, hoping that she could stay strong to see it through until the end. The relationship she had with Andy was a little strange to me, but I wasn't very surprised by it considering the lack of interest her terrible mother has taken in her life. I HATED her mother and father with a passion. She's one of those women that can't survive without a man and given the chance will choose him over her child, each and every time. Her father is just a sick and evil man, and I really looked forward to the end he got. However, it's a tad bit unrealistic to sexually abuse several children (including your own) and only get 9 years in prison. Maybe if the father was never sent to prison or was cleared for all charges due to lack of evidence or some other bullshit that usually happens in cases like these, the plot may have been a bit more realistic.

Laura Weiss, thank you for writing this book, as it makes those around us more aware of the dangers of child abuse and how rampant it runs in our world. I'm currently starting Leftovers and I know I won't be disappointed!… (meer)

The first chapter, told from Helen's viewpoint as she remembers watching Hanna grow up and how their lives drifted apart, made me tear up. And that pretty much sums up how I felt about this book in general.

I wasn't depressed by the novel, or unduly unhappy after reading it, but so much affection could be felt between Helen and Hanna that it made me miss my grandmother (who died a year and half ago, but who battled Alzheimer's for years before that). A lot of what Hanna feels--in regards to the changes in her 'Gran's' behavior and mannerisms, though different from what changed my grandmother, resonated strongly within me.

Other pieces of How It Ends, such as Hanna's relationship with her boyfriend and the communication block that seemed to be in place between herself and her parents, spoke less to me. In regards to her parents, there seemed to be a loss of understanding between Hanna and her parents. In one scene Hanna questions her mother about what she would do if she caught her husband cheating on her.


And I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't her easy, "Divorce him."
...
"You would break up our family?"
...
"I can't stand that you just said that," she said, grabbing a bottle of Italian dressing by the neck and shaking it like she was trying to kill it. "If your father cheated on me, then he made the decision to risk every single thing we had together, knowing that this would destroy us, so no, Hanna, it wouldn't be me breaking up the family, it would be him."

(pages 252-253, How It Ends)

And then a discussion of unconditional love ensues. I think Hanna's viewpoint and her mother's (and her father's for that matter) are so skewed in opposite directions that Hanna can honestly not understand where they are coming from. But you love him, so why wouldn't you forgive him? Throughout the book she struggles with this question. She loves Seth, so she should forgive him because of that love, not because he deserves it or she truly believes he will change.

At times Hanna is an interesting character, but others she is so typically 'teenager' that I grind my teeth in frustration. Maybe because I am beyond the age where I want to hear about petty friendship squabbles or minor dramas involving clothing and nails. Helen, by contrast, is a very interesting woman. She tries so hard to be what Hanna needs, but still Hanna slips away and Helen doesn't understand why (her and her husband Lon are childless, she is Hanna's honorary grandmother). Then as she grows older and more frail everything she ever wanted to tell Hanna--about the truth of her life, about the truth of life in general--becomes vastly important, but it becomes almost impossible.

The ending left me a little hollow inside, from feeling so much tension and emotions throughout the book. Like Hanna I always want to hear stories with Happy Endings when I feel sad, or conflicted with the world. I turn to romances more often when I'm depressed then my normal standby of dark fantasy specifically because I want to read about a tormented relationship that in the end works out happily no matter what ridiculous things happen. Reading about the bittersweet solution the heroine finds to save the world at the cost of her lover, family and life...not so much.… (meer)

I enjoyed the writing - the author has a way with adjectives and descriptions - but the narrative was choppy and left a lot of what I felt was important information out. This information seemed to have been omitted to give the reader to feel more for the victims rather than the dad but I would have liked to have both sides of the story or at least a little more background on everyone.
This book was very depressing, though. It's from the POV of a notorious pedophile's daughter. We don't get the full story of what happened before the narrative but you do learn a bit about how he lured his victims through the narrator's own memories/flashbacks. Andy, another victim and the narrator's best friend/boyfriend, lived in the same complex though we don't learn that much about him. The arresting officer also lives in the same complex. The town much be very, very small or this is an unrealistic coincidence. An actual town is never mentioned.
I wouldn't recommend this book, but I felt that the writing was enough to keep me interested in a type of book/subject matter I have both very little experience and interest in.… (meer)