The Best Kind of People

by Zoe Whittall

The gripping summer read for fans of Megan Abbott's The Fever and Louise O'Neill's Asking For It .

'Prods at the dark underbelly of society.' Red Best Summer Beach Reads

'Compelling story characters readers will recognize and come to love and writing that makes it effortless to turn page after page.' Vancouver Sun

THE BEST KIND OF PEOPLE is a page-turning Canadian bestseller about a family on the brink of collapse. It gives no easy answers, but once you stay up all night reading it, you'll want to talk about it with everyone you know.

What if someone you trusted was accused of the unthinkable?

George Woodbury is a teacher at a prestigious Connecticut private school. He is voted Teacher of the Year every year, after he rescued the school from a gunman attack. On his daughter's 17th birthday this beloved husband and father, is arrested for sexual impropriety with teenage girls on a skiing trip.

His wife, Joan, vaults between denial and rage as the community she loved turns on her.

Their daughter, Sadie, a popular over-achieving high school senior, becomes a social pariah.

Their son, Andrew, a lawyer, assists in his father's defense, while wrestling with his own unhappy memories of his teen years coming out as gay. With George awaiting trial, how do the members of his family pick up the pieces and keep living their lives? How do they defend someone they love while wrestling with the possibility of his guilt?

'Whittall places the reader right at the centre of their pain. It's the best depiction of female suffering I've read since Jane Smiley eloquently tackled sexual abuse in A Thousand Acres.' Toronto Star

• ISBN13: 9781473667068
• Publish Date: 23 March 2017
• Publish Status: Transferred
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Hodder & Stoughton
• Format: eBook
• Pages: 416
• Language: English

Reviews

[chymerra]

I was intrigued by the plot of The Best Kind of People. This book was looking at the aftermath of when a teacher is accused of sexual assault on a student. When I mean aftermath, I mean how the family is affected by everything that happened and how they cope with it. So, I was a little disappointed when the book didn’t live up to my internal hype of it.

I could not connect with any of the characters after my initial feeling bad for them. There was a disconnect with Sadie, Andrew, and Joan with me. They didn’t seem to ring true as I read the book. Sadie’s descent into smoking pot and stealing drugs was a little too much for me. What also was a little too much was Andrew’s reactions to his hometown. To sum it up: He loved to hate the town and the people in it. And then there is Joan. For someone who kept saying that she didn’t look down on people, she sure looked down on everyone in the book. She was very judgy and she drove me nuts. Her reactions to different relationships nailed it for me.

What I did like, and I wish more emphasis was put on it, was George and what he did. The author did a great job keeping you on your toes. Did George do it or was he being set up? There wasn’t a concrete answer. You were forced to make your own decision based on the facts that the author let leak during the story. It was great.

The author also did a great job portraying a family that was blindsided by what happened. The effect of George and his arrest almost dismantled his family. Sadie got the worst of it…seeing that she was in the same school as her accusers. She went from being a popular well-liked girl to a social pariah within a day. Andrew, whose relationship was already on shaky ground, started developing awful anger and relationship issues. Joan was having issues coming to term with what George did and had no clue how to act or what to do. The author also did a great job of showing how they recovered or didn’t recover, from what happened.

The end of the book was not a happy one which was ok with me. Not all endings have to be happy. There were still issues that needed to be resolved and you are left wondering “Did he do it?”

My Summary of The Best Kind of People: 3 stars

The Best Kind of People started off with a bang and then stalled out before ending on a weak note. While I liked that I was kept on my toes about George, I felt that there was a disconnect with his family and that is what brought the book down a star for me.

Will I reread: Maybe

Will I recommend to family and friends: Maybe

Age range: Adult

Why: Sexual situations, drug use

I would like to thank Zoe Whittall, NetGalley, Random House and Ballantine Books for allowing me to review The Best Kind of People

**I chose to leave this review after reading an advance reader copy**

[despair_witch_16]

For me it was okay but the ending really disappointed me. I asked myself 'That's it?' and 'Really?'. I expected more from the ending than what I got and it kind of leaves me with questions and I feel that this ending was the easy way out.