A tragedy from the past resurfaces in this tale of family secrets and reignited love.
After her mother’s death twelve years ago, Lynette Carlisle watched her close-knit family unravel. One by one, her four older siblings left their Nantucket home and never returned. All seem to harbor animosity toward their father, silently blaming him for their mother’s death. Nobody will talk about that dreadful day, and Lynette can’t remember a bit of it.
But when next-door neighbor Nicholas Cooper returns to Nantucket, he brings the past with him. Once her brother’s best friend and Lynette’s first crush, Nick seems to hiding things from her. Lynette wonders what he knows about the day her mother died and hopes he might help her remember the things she can’t.
But Nick has no intention of telling Lynette the truth. Besides the damage it might cause his own family, he doesn’t want to risk harming the fragile friendship between him and the woman he once thought of as a kid sister.
As their father’s failing health and financial concerns bring the Carlisle siblings home, secrets begin to surface—secrets that will either restore their shattered relationships or separate the siblings forever. But pulling up anchor on the past propels them into the perfect storm, powerful enough to make them question all they ever believed in.
Catherine West’s story The Things We Knew is more than a roll through family history – it’s the slow, suspenseful investigation of suppressed memories about a suspicious death that devastated a family. Each family member has moved on but one, and that one is left holding the luggage of responsibility for the present and confusion over the past. That one wants to find peace with the past and find hope for the future but memory gaps leave her bending under the weight of her burdens.
Her siblings are no different. While Lynnette is trying to deal with the past, her siblings are all fleeing from it – but they’re just as captive as she is. Their stories are widely varied and uniqe, and I like the way that West incorporates a broad range of the human condition in the members of this one family.
Lynnette has kept her faith through her struggles, and her journey is inspiring. Her siblings’ journeys, although all very different, each provide lessons of their own throughout the story, and therein lies the genius of the book.
While Lynnette is a main character, her siblings have strong supporting roles, but no two characters are alike. This variance keeps the reader turning pages and makes it possible for many different readers to connect emotionally with someone in the story. I personally liked Lynnette’s determination to find the truth, but I can see my daughter in Ryan and my husband in Nick. I think the Carlisle siblings will appeal to a widely varied audience.
I thoroughly enjoyed the way that West dispenses the family information. The Carlisles are full of secrets, and by dribbling them out slowly, often as Lynnette discovers them, the reader is kept thirsting for more.
I don’t think the cover does the book justice. It’s very simple, and for some reason the title font made me think it was going to be an emotionally-dramatic family story; and maybe that’s not too far off, but with the suspicion of murder, international music stars, alcohol and drug addictions, secret trysts, and controlling parents, it’s so much more than that. The Things We Knew may not quality for romantic suspense, exactly, but it’s close; it’s definitely a summer must-read.
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Catherine West writes stories of hope and healing from her island home in Bermuda. When she’s not at the computer working on her next story, you can find her taking her Border collie for long walks on the beach or tending to her roses and orchids. She and her husband have two grown children.
