My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Once upon a time there was a king who had three beautiful daughters. The daughters grew up and had many beautiful children. They summered altogether on the king’s private island off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard in four made-to-order houses, one for the king and one for each of the princesses and her offspring. They were a grand old family.
Except, they weren’t.
The king withholds his love and his money. The princesses desperately claw and scratch to earn his approval and drink way too much to dull the pain of rejection and lovelessness. The children implode with the weight of the family’s outward perfection and inward desolation.
E. Lockhart weaves fairy tales and classical literature together with the myths and lies one family believes and perpetuates to create a seering indictment of the sins of the fathers visited upon the generations. Smart and beautifully written, my heart aches for the main character’s “what could have been.”
