twisted sisters

Charley Kelley is only 19, but she’s already been through some tough years. The only family she has left is her grandmother, and she’s struggling with memory issues. She’s in a local nursing home, so Charly works very hard to afford her room and care. They live in a small town in Maine, but there is a high end hotel named Precipice. Charley works as the maid there, and with that job, she gets to live onsite, in a small room, rent-free. She doesn’t love the job, or how the owner hits on her from time to time, but she doesn’t know of another job in town where she can live and still afford her grandmother’s care.

But when the owner of the Precipice dies suddenly, his three daughters are planning on returning to the hotel for the reading of the will. Iris, Vicki, and Faith will be there soon, along with the attorney who is the executor of the will, so Charley is in charge of getting the rooms cleaned before they show up. But she has a problem. She had recently met a woman named Bree in town, and Bree was trying to get away from her abusive boyfriend. Bree shows up at the hotel, desperate and asking Charley to hide her for a few days. Charley is reluctant, but she doesn’t feel like she can leave this woman in danger, so she agrees to hide her in one of the hotel rooms for a few days.

Then there’s the problem of Larry. Larry is the hurricane heading for them. While some of the locals are writing off the storm, thinking the bark will be worse than the bite, several of the coming tourists have canceled their reservations at the hotel. Soon it becomes clear that the sisters and the lawyer will be the only guests, hurricane be damned.

This is the first chance Charley has had to meet the sisters. There is Iris, the recovering addict. Vicki and her husband own a jewelry store in Boston, and their son is in college studying philosophy. Faith and her wife Hope have a teenaged son also, a quiet boy who speaks in rhyme when he does talk. Vicki immediately starts making demands of Charley, but the more things go wrong at the Precipice, the less that matters.

Olga, the longtime cook, quits suddenly. Larry hits with a vengeance, bringing down a tree on the drive, so no one can leave. Cell service goes out. And inside the hotel, strange threats add a sense of foreboding to the gathering. The will is read, and with all their father’s rules and stipulations, none of the sisters are happy with the outcome. They thought they were getting the hotel outright, and that is not how their father set up the inheritance.

And then the first person is killed.

As the storm rages outside and the wi-fi goes down, those stranded at the Precipice have to figure out a way to survive the storm, and each other. It turns out that each of the sisters has a secret to keep, and some of those secrets are worth killing to keep.

Charley isn’t a part of the family, and she got nothing in the will. In fact, Vicki fires her, so she also has no job, no home, no way to take care of her grandmother. She has literally nothing left to lose. Except her life. Will she be able to stay alive until the storm passes and they can get help to the hotel, or is this the end for the young maid?

One Big Happy Family is a secret-fueled thriller that asks what it is that makes a family. As the long-held lies are exposed and the truths come out, the danger amps up, until everyone is fighting for their own survival. This novel is a series of dangerous events, escalating and escalating, to a nail-biting conclusion.

I listened to One Big Happy Family on audio, and narrator Saskia Maarleveld, who brought this twisted tale to life. There was a lot of tension, which I thought she handled beautifully. However, there are also a lot of characters who all show up about the same time, so I did have some trouble keeping everyone straight in my head for a bit, especially the sisters. But it was a fun book to listen to, and anyone who loves a story filled with danger, tension, and family secrets should consider adding this one to their shelf.

A copy of the audio book for One Big Happy Family was provided by Macmillan Audio, and egalleys were provided by St. Martin’s Press, both through NetGalley, with many thanks.