Cute, lovable characters....shows the importance of family and having a great childhood. You will fall in love with the little girl who is the main character. ( )

She's a good writer, very humorous. However, the book isn't necessarily very happy as it's about a very dysfunctional family with a father who beats his wife and kids.

Deeply moving story about family, sacrifices and secrets -- the ones we allow to fester until they've become much larger than we can imagine. I was right there with Lucy as she worked to uncover the story of her grandparents and her own father. Explosive and compulsively readable, I felt like I was sitting at the kitchen table in Timber Falls, eating oatmeal with the kids! Very well-written and interesting. Highly recommended!

My full review is available here. ( )

For some reason, when I began reading Thank You for All Things, I thought it was about the grown up Lucy returning home to care for a dying grandfather and uncovering secrets from the past (I think because of the way the summary starts - at eleven, she already knows she wants to be a psychologist. So when she grows and becomes a psychologist, she has this other stuff to face.). I didn't realize that the story was told from the point of view of an eleven year old. Would that have prevented me from picking up the book originally? Maybe. But I'm very glad I stuck with it anyways.

Lucy is not a typical eleven year old. She is incredibly precocious and very intelligent. She is intuitive and is perceptive enough to be able to read body language. This means that she is a gifted narrator; there is little frustration associated with the fact that she is young.

It's also incredibly interesting to witness the story through Lucy's eyes. If we were seeing it through Tess's eyes (the mother), her irritation with Lucy's obsession over the identity of her father would be palpable. The reader would become irritated with Lucy - whatever the story, why can't Lucy just understand that Tess is trying to protect her daughter?

Instead, the reader feels Lucy's need to learn who her father is. We see the unfolding of the history of dark secrets and family tragedies through the eyes of a curious eleven-year-old. Though Lucy can seem much older than her years, she works wonderfully as a narrator. Seeing the story through another's eyes would make it entirely different, which is why it works so well. It is an extremely interesting point of view, and Kring deserves credit for writing it convincingly.

Thank You for All Things is a story of forgiveness and understanding. It also explores the friction between a mother's need to protect her children and a child's need to know and understand. It's a great read, and I definitely recommend it.

From S. Krishna's Books ( )