The Things We Wish Were True

So glad my wish was granted with this one through Netgalley it is an outstanding read. I am an avid reader of all things interesting. This tops the list for interesting.
A spider's intricately spun web blocks the entrance to the neighborhood swimming pool on opening day, a portent of some sticky situations in store for the residents of Sycamore Glen. There isn't a person in the group who doesn't have a secret. And yes, those secrets will all be laid bare before summer's end. The draw back to living in a small town everyone knows everyone and sometimes everything.
Each character is very well developed almost like the author is making this book a dress that fits the reader perfectly from start to finish. That being said Zell is my show more favorite character we all have someone like her in our lives. The DO GOODER. Always the one to bring food to a family dealing with a tragedy, lend support when it is needed, quietly observe what is going on around her. Yet she has her own secrets, things she hopes never come to light despite the fact that they might help someone else. Trying to put a puzzle together yet she doesn’t have all the pieces together just yet.
Then you have Jancey the welcome home girl. The girl who has everything growing up in this lovely town then she grows up and comes back with nothing. A husband in jail and two girls who need her to keep them together. Lance was a sweet character in my opinion I truly think the two of them are a cute couple I think the author’s choice to implement the love scene was well positioned and gave you a way to cut the tension of the town.
If you like books that leave you guessing and wanting to put everything back together for the people in this town you will love it. It reads like a television miniseries where each characters chapter is an episode that brings you closer to the end.

Whalen makes you feel at home with her characters and in all honesty this is an easy breezy beach read that you could do in one sitting it was very well done. show less

Thanks to Kindle First I as able to read this book.
This is a classic example of how the publishing world "doesn't get it" this book should have been released in the beginning of summer. It is a perfect beach read, meaning it has a little mystery, a bit of a love story, and is a wonderful escape. To me these are some of the qualities of a great summer book. The story is similar to a Liane Moriarty book, with chapters told from various viewpoints, and periodic hints of significant events from the past that will later be exposed.
The story is well thought out and is an easy book to get into, and Finnish.

Great book told from many different viewpoints, this story takes place in a small town in the heat of the summer, where a near-tragedy in their community pool brings the neighbors closer together.

And exposes many secrets they'd rather keep hidden.

I like the various characters POV's, which had to have been a writer's nightmare! Male, female, and child POV's told stories that ripped at my heart, intrigued me, and kept me guessing.

A very good read!

3.5 Sycamore Glen, North Carolina, the small town Jancy left after high school, threatened by a stalker that none could identify. Now her husband in prison, she and her two young daughters have returned home to her mother, the boy she left behind now married to the woman who had been her best friend. Over the course of the summer, a summer spent at the local pool, a near tragedy will occur and long held secrets will be revealed.

This book is incredibly readable, it flows so well, alternately told in chapters narrated by all the main characters. Cailey, the young girl whose mother must work leaving her in charge of HER younger brother was one of my favorites. She is so incredibly wise beyond her years and will be lauded as a heroine show more before novel's end. Zell, the towns busy body or the one who seems to take care of everything or everyone depending how you look at it, she sees much but misses what is under her own nose. All these stories are wrapped around a missing girl, a girl who has been missing for three months, her parents frantic.

A bit melodramatic, especially the end, but it fits this book well. Small town secrets, characters terribly flawed, actually had me looking down my block and wondering what secrets my well known neighbors were keeping. And I know there has to be some. Just a good easy to read book, with a little suspense thrown in, perfect for enjoying by the pool.

ARC from Netgalley. show less

In small town suburbia everyone has their secrets and sometimes it takes pulling together in a time of tragedy for those secrets to finally come out into the open. The book is told from the point of view of about half a dozen characters, ranging from a retired lady who’s a bit of a busybody to a stay at home mom debating whether to have another child to a man whose wife has recently left him and is struggling to keep his kids happy without their mom around to a young girl who tries to keep the family together and watch after her little brother while her mom is at work.

It took me a little while to get into this book. While all of the characters grew on me over the course of the story, a few of them just rubbed me the wrong way at the show more start making me less likely to pick up the book rather than the TV remote. Once I gave them a chance, though, I was sucked in. I admit I was a little impatient to learn some of the secrets, but it’s worth the wait. While I enjoyed the book, the characters mostly fell flat and some of their decisions toward the end were highly questionable and unrealistic, which gave my book club plenty of fodder for discussion. In that sense, it was a success. ;) show less

So many secrets! On its surface Sycamore Glen is simply a quiet neighborhood where everyone spends the summer gathering around the community pool. The lifeguards aren’t the greatest and a near-tragedy sets off a string of events that reveal some things that have been long hidden. This is contemporary fiction that hits a point where it's impossible to put it down until all the skeletons are out of their closets.

To be perfectly honest, for the first half of this book (or more, I am not really sure) I thought this book was terrible. In the end, I ended up reading about 100 pages in one night and I enjoyed how the author decided to close out the story. What I did enjoy was that there was an undeniable sense of closure for all the characters at the end of the novel. However, I felt like the ending was more than 100% predictable, in fact I feel like the final turning point was obvious from the first 30 or so pages in. I'm rating this as 3 stars, because it definitely was not horrible enough to deserve a 2 star rating, but I also just did not find it as enjoyable/shocking/stunning as I was lead to believe it would be.