This is going to be a another tough review for me, because I don't really have a lot to say about this book. I checked to see if I'd left any comments on Goodreads as I was reading, and found only one:


July 26, 2017 – 51.0% "First half was a slow burn, but hasn't lost my interest. Seems to be picking up the pace a bit at the start of the second half. Curious to see where the story goes from this point on."



Quick Recap: Nancy and her family move to Hawaii after her husband cheated on her, hoping for a new start. Ana leads a yoga class, which is how Nancy meets her. Nancy is captivated by her wisdom and approach to life, and before you know it, the two are inseparable. Nancy neglects her family in favor of Ana, and finds herself doing things she would never have done without Ana's influence—good things, as well as bad things.

I didn't dislike this book (if I had, it would have been relegated to the virtual DNF pile), but I didn't love it, either. And I'm pretty sure that's because I had Ana pegged as a manipulator with an agenda from the start, and it flabbergasted me that Nancy was clueless about it for so long.

It's no surprise Nancy fell under Ana's spell... she was feeling vulnerable after her husband's affair, living far from home in a place where she doesn't know anyone, and her teenaged twin sons are becoming juvenile delinquents. What bothered me is how rapidly it happened. It felt unrealistic to me that a woman newly arrived in her new home, determined to work on her marriage and give her sons the guidance they (desperately) needed, would toss all of her responsibilities aside to spend (all) her time with a woman she barely knew.

Not only that, but Ana almost immediately starts telling her sob stories about how incredibly hard her life has been—and Nancy feels more and more sympathy for her with each one, rather than becoming suspicious. Is it just me, or is that odd? Maybe her reaction strikes me as being unrealistic because I've been around that particular block of manipulation before. Regardless, it just didn't ring true for me. If Nancy were a younger woman, perhaps it would have felt reasonable that she did that... but not a middle-aged woman.

This is a novel that struck me as having a lot of potential for a great story, but it didn't quite get there, in the end. The explosive finale I envisioned as I read the last pages never happened, which is such a shame because the way it ended was lackluster compared to what I expected to happen.

Having said all that... I did keep reading all the way to the end, and I thought Huntley's writing was pretty good, even though the story itself didn't enthrall me as I'd hoped. So I'm going to rate this one at three stars (even though I considered changing it to two and a half stars) based on that.

I think this is one of those novels that each individual reader needs to judge for themselves—based on their particular likes and dislikes—whether or not this is a good fit for them as a reader. A quick skim through the ratings on Goodreads shows ratings from low to high, so clearly—while this may not be a book everyone enjoys reading—some people will.

It's your call, readers.

Reasons I bailed:

This entire book reads like a Costco advertisement, kind of like the way tv shows these days ever so nonchalantly throw in product placement. If you find yourself craving a Costco ham + pineapple pizza or Red Vines, stop and think. It never stops.

The author will sometimes shift into foreboding metaphor at the end of a chapter and then slam it down the reader's throat. I do not need that much help, and rather than building tension, I was just annoyed. I can't quote directly since I have a review copy but one example is roughly "lava is destructive but somehow I ignored this and IN OTHER WORDS IT WAS ALREADY TOO LATE."

I feel like I need the author to assume I'm smarter than that. To think that I'm connecting the dots, seeing a problem with some of the characters' actions. It would have been more unnerving for her not to comment on it, really. I wasn't willing to continue after the third time this happened.

Swan Huntley’s sophomore novel can be described in four acts:

Act I: In which Nancy and her family attempt to make a new start in a house near an island but find they are falling into the same routine.

Act II: In which Nancy Murphy decides to explore what this island has to offer and meets Ana, a free-spirited yoga teacher.

Act II: In which Nancy finds out that Ana is dying of pancreatic cancer and they set out to right as many karma-wrongs as possible.

Act IV: In which the novel finally picked up the pace and becomes a thriller.

Overall, I like the plot of this book. I love books that don’t necessarily have a romantic plot, they just focus on established relationships and platonic friendships. The Goddesses is mostly about Nancy and Ana’s friendship, which I like, but there was enough foreshadowing that I could tell something was off.

I read We Could Be Beautiful by Swan Huntley last month, and while I liked the writing, I wasn’t completely sold on the characters. Still, there was enough foreshadowing and family drama that I kept reading. I didn’t feel that way with The Goddesses. While I liked Nancy and Ana’s characters, I felt like there wasn’t enough surrounding Nancy’s life to give it any substance.

Nancy herself isn’t an interesting character, but I was hoping that she would break out of her shell. Several chapters begin with the routine of making coffee, and her husband’s resentment that Nancy spends so much time with Ana. I like that conflict, and I think the book has a lot to offer in terms of relationship dynamics in that regard, but other sections of the book fell short.

I felt like Nancy’s family wasn’t fleshed out well enough. The twins seem like window-dressing for most of the book, when they turned up they spoke in unison or echoes and usually answered in monosyllabic phrases. (Okay, that may not be unlike a teenager, but about halfway through the book it gets annoying.)

Really, the only relationship that kept me reading was Ana and Nancy, and their relationship reminded me of Jenny Downham’s Before I Die mixed with a bit of Tuesday with Morrie for most of the book. Then it took a very rushed turn as the ladies set out to fulfill one of Ana’s final requests, which is when the novel got really interesting, and I started to really connect with the characters more.

In the end, I struggle to rate this book because I do feel like I got something out of it, but I also don’t feel like the characters were developed well enough, and there’s one final twist at the end that I wished was alluded to more throughout the story.

The Descendants meets Single White Female in this captivating novel about a woman who moves her family to Hawaii, only to find herself wrapped up in a dangerous friendship, from the celebrated author of We Could Be Beautiful.

When Nancy and her family arrive in Kona, Hawaii, they are desperate for a fresh start. Nancy's husband has cheated on her; they sleep in separate bedrooms and their twin sons have been acting out, setting off illegal fireworks. But Hawaii is paradise: they plant an orange tree in the yard; they share a bed once again and Nancy resolves to make a happy life for herself. She starts taking a yoga class and there she meets Ana, the charismatic teacher. Ana has short, black hair, a warm smile, and a hard-won wisdom that resonates deeply within Nancy. They are soon spending all their time together, sharing dinners, relaxing in Ana's hot tub, driving around Kona in the cute little car Ana helps Nancy buy. As Nancy grows closer and closer to Ana skipping family dinners and leaving the twins to their own devices she feels a happiness and understanding unlike anything she's ever experienced, and she knows that she will do anything Ana asks of her.

* * * * *

I had high hopes for this book as I do really enjoy psychological thrillers however this book never managed to catch and hold my interest. It was well written but I found that the characters themselves lacked the depth needed for me to invest in.

Like I said, this book is well written with no grammar or editing mistakes so others might really enjoy it. It just wasn't for me because I have found that I really need to care what happens to a character for there to be any build up of tension. If any of my readers pick up THE GODDESSES and feel different about the book, drop me a line. I would love to discuss it.


*** I received this book at no charge from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions expressed within are my own.

This is one of those books for me that I wanted to abandon during the first 70 pages, and then ended up loving.  While I could not personally identify with everything that Nancy is going through, there was still something so relatable to her character.  I think every person goes through a phase of trying to figure out who they are, especially in a new city.

This book is categorized as a psychological thriller, I am here to tell you that it is not.  While there is a small twist in plot line, there's really nothing thriller-esque about it.  The Goddesses falls much more under the general fiction genre.

And on a random side note, as a family who shops at Costco every Sunday, and about 99.9% of all of our food comes from there, I loved all of the little Costco references.

The Goddesses was a quick read. I enjoyed it although I wish the ending would've been a bit more "Single White Female".

I appear to have lost the goddess part of this book, and have instead found a lack of common sense. I know, it's not common anymore, but the main charters do some really stupid things. They are impaired on low levels that felt out of place. Cooking, cleaning, relating, ignoring the people who are suppose to be the most important in your life for, a mid-life crisis or becoming a co-depending personality? This book, it's the slow dissolving of several relationships into a larger mess that didn't add up to me.

My copy came from Net Galley. My thoughts and opinions are my own. This review is left of my own free choosing.

A woman (Nancy) agrees to move her family to Hawaii even though her husband has cheated and he received a transfer at work. . A new start is a good thing, right? Maybe, maybe not. Nancy wants more so she joins a yoga class and meets 2 women. One of the women is named Ana.. She quickly lets Ana invade her life and begins to forgo her family for this woman. As we continue reading, we see where Ana is not stable. Will Nancy see it before it is too late?This book was just ok for me. I was not pleased with the ending. It seemed rushed. Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the ARC of this book in return for my honest review.

** spoiler alert ** Although I received a copy of this e-book from the publisher, all opinions remain my own.

It took me a LONG time to get through this book. While I loved the writing, I didn't love the story. Huntly does an amazing job weaving the scene for this book. It is set on the big island and you have that backdrop to the story.

When Nancy and Ana first meet, I thought it was a great friendship for Nancy. Someone to help her keep busy during the days her sons were at school and her husband at work. As I delved deeper into the book, I began to notice some strange behavior from Ana. I suspected she might not be what she pretended to be. By the last 25% of the book, I couldn't' stop reading. I was being pulled along by all the questions that were slowly being answered.


SPOILER ALERT!


Seriously, don't read if you don't want me to ruin it!
I loved how this book concluded. It wrapped everything up in a package for me. You get to see Ana choosing her next "victim" and you see Nancy moving on with her family.

I couldn't put this book down - I classify it as one of those "train wreck" stories that you are upset with while you read, but just can't stop reading anyway. Disturbing and full of characters I did NOT love, THE GODDESSES hits readers with an addictive relationship in a beautiful setting. The cover is deceptively calm for a story that holds so many twisted people and events - be aware. And honestly, that's why I liked it so much. It sucked me in with the serene image and the promised Hawaiian setting, and then glued me to the pages with Ana's despicable character and her attempted ruin of Nancy's life. Or was it an attempt to ruin her? Still trying to figure that out!

This isn't a frothy beach read, it's a glimpse into the desperation many of us fall into when we are forced into a situation where loneliness looms and nothing is familiar. Nancy's attraction to Ana reminds me of how desperate I was for ANYONE to hang out with when I was a stay-at-home mom of an infant and all of my friends worked......I ended up at some girl's house for a pitch about a pyramid scheme thingy because we met at Target and had babies the same age for goodness sakes! Nancy isn't the best mom and she isn't the best wife and she isn't the best anything.......but neither are the rest of us.

Recommended for readers who love a slow burn and don't mind reading on the dark side.

Not what I expected. When I first started reading this book, I couldn't jump into it at first, it had a slow start. But after getting into this book, I was so full of several different emotions: bewilderment, a bit of disbelief at times, and a bit of empathy for the main character. I'm not real sure whether or not I would pass the book on to others after reading it. In my opinion, I just thought that Nancy was way too trusting and a tad naive of a person all around.

Having had caught her husband cheating on her with a friend of hers, The Murphy Family takes a job transfer from California to Hawaii to try to save their marriage and family. Their twin boys, Cam and Jed, adjust quickly, as does her husband, Chuck but Nancy is lonely in their new home. Looking for things to do other than hanging out with her husband's co-workers wife, Nancy tries out yoga and quickly befriends her instructor, Ana. She's so impressed with this woman, that she tries so hard to be like her, a "New Nancy" not realizing that she's quickly becoming Ana's little toy.

Ana is slowly manipulating Nancy, who goes by Nan now, that she's blowing off her family to spend more time with her. When Ana tells Nan that she has pancreatic cancer, and has only 6 months to live, Nan doesn't want to lose her, and starts to spend more time with her friend. Missing her kid's games, and family dinners have become second nature to her. Little by little, Ana manipulates Nan into doing things that are wrong, yet when she utters "I'm dying." Nan doesn't think twice about the consequences.

Her husband starts drinking again and her boys are in trouble at school and town, but she doesn't care. As long as Ana is there cheering her on, it's all good. Chuck recognizes who the problem is, but Nan is too blind to see it.

When a "dying wish" goes awry, can Nan live with the consequences? Will she be able to see without her rose colored glasses for the first time?

A wonderfully creepy and haunting read for fans of B.A. Paris.

Can paradise fix a broken marriage? Nancy and Chuck move to Hawaii, hoping for a fresh start after his affair, but Nancy isn’t ready to forgive. When Nancy meets Ana, a Svengali-like yoga instructor whose serenity conceals a troubling malevolence, she’s captivated. Chillingly elegant, this psychological thriller will make you reconsider the idea of frenemies.

I was first drawn to this book because of the Hawaii setting. But, I was also intrigued by the new friendship between Nancy and Ana. I also wanted to see how Nancy would deal with her cheating husband and troubled sons. The story drew me in from the start.

Nancy is devastated when she finds out about her husband’s affair, but she forgives him. When her husband has the chance to relocate from San Diego to Hawaii for his job, Nancy sees this as a way to transform herself. She will no longer be the typical homemaker. She will be a new woman. Once settled in their new home, Nancy decides to take up yoga where she meets and becomes good friends with Ana, the yoga instructor, who has cancer. Their friendship started out good with them doing charitable things, like helping homeless people, but when Ana moves in with Nancy, things start taking a different turn. Ana is not the woman Nancy thought she was. Ana completely turns Nancy’s life upside down and in the end of the story, she shows her true colors. Ana is not at all what Nancy thought.

As a housewife, I was able to relate to Nancy’s feelings about taking care of the home, doing things she was expected to do, and her desire for a friend to hang out with. The story was fast paced and kept me on the edge of my seat wondering what would happen next.

Nancy and Chuck are struggling in their lives. They met in college and fell in love, got marred, had twin boys, did all the things they were supposed to. Now the boys are in high school, and Chuck's long hours at work turned into a brief affair. As a way to start over, they move to Hawaii. Once the boys are back in school and involved in sports, Nancy is left with a hole in her life. She no longer has all her friends, the other moms in her kids' classes and on their sports teams, and she finds herself wanting to find some meaning in her life. 

One morning she decides to try a yoga class on the beach. There are only a few other people in the class, and as Nancy sits in her car deciding whether she wants to go through with it, a beautiful woman with a compelling confidence knocks on her car window and encourages her to stay. Nancy decides to give it a try, and finds that that woman is actually Ana, the teacher. As Ana guides Nancy and her classmates through their poses and breathing exercises, Nancy finds that she is able to let go of some of her stress, of some of her past attachments, and she likes this new part of herself. 

The weeks go on, and Nancy has no friends other than the wife of a coworker of Chuck's, a kind but desperately lonely woman of the type Nancy had left behind. So as she continues to go to Ana's yoga class, and gets to know her better, Nancy finds herself more and more drawn to Ana's free spirit. Nancy makes other changes in her life. She embraces organic food and focuses on vegetables. She starts a garden and frequents the farmer's market. She finds herself lightening up, feeling more compassion, feeling hopeful. 

Her friendship with Ana starts to blossom also. It starts with an afternoon talking in Ana's Jacuzzi on the ocean, and it builds to trying to help others. They make sandwiches and hand them out to the homeless. They write encouraging sayings on public sidewalks. The drive hitchhikers to their destination. They build good karma and wait for the universe to pay them back. 

And slowly, Nancy starts to lose herself to the friendship. She finds herself spending more time with Ana than she planned to. She starts skipping family dinners. She keeps secrets. What started as an uplifting friendship between two women is slowly becoming something more. But what? And will Nancy realize in time and be able to save herself from the potentially dangerous consequences to herself and her family? 

Swan Huntley's The Goddesses is an expertly crafted look at loneliness and friendship, at self-doubt and confidence, at attention and distraction. It's so beautifully written that it was painful to put this book aside and go back to real life (note: do not read this book on a quick work break; it will destroy you to have to put it down and will distract you until your next break. I'm being kind to tell you now. I had to find out the hard way). Anyone interested in the psychological consequences of a bad relationship will read this book with fascination. I can't recommend it enough. It is beautiful and heart-breaking and I loved every single page.  



Galleys for The Goddesses were provided by Doubleday through NetGalley.com, with many thanks.

I wouldn't categorize The Goddesses as a thriller. It is a very consuming novel. It consumed my time, as I was quite willing to read late into the night to complete it, and it consumed my thoughts. I am a woman of close age to the main character. I found her to be a bit two dimensional, but quite recognizable. Once I warmed to her, I began to root for her. Swan Huntley didnt make the heroine perfect, which made her relateable. I kept waiting for her to wise up, learn to respond rather than react, and eventually I was satisfied with the story's resolution. I think this might make an excellent book discussion selection, as I certainly wanted to talk about it afterward,
Beautiful setting, evenly paced story, interesting characters, and unique situations made this a fun read. I would definitely read more from Swan Huntley.

Honestly, I was underwhelmed with this book. I previously read Swan Huntley's first novel, We Could Be Beautiful so I was really excited to read this. Unfortantely, this book was somewhat predictable and didn't have relatable characters. The ending couldn't have come quickly enough.. I would however recommend this if you're looking for a quick easy beach read.

Wow! I finished this book this morning and I am stunned. I was emotionally invested in this story and these characters, it was as if they were people I knew. Nancy was going through a difficult period in her life and she found a friendship with Ana that she desperately needed. Ana was a free spirit who showed Nancy a different way to live.
Nancy struggled to decide if she wanted to be the woman that she was in the States or if she was going to reinvent herself. Ana made that choice easy for Nancy. As their relationship became stronger, Nancy’s home life started to fall apart.
This was a psychological thriller that read like contemporary fiction. I was hooked. I highly recommend this book.

Swan Huntley, author of We Could Be Beautiful, creates a completely different narrative and a complexity of characters in her second novel, The Goddesses.
In We Could Be Beautiful, Huntley’s main character Catherine never surpassed the first impression of a privileged trust fund endowed woman-child desperate for love and validation, resulting in a major deception. The Goddesses presents a page-turning narrative of female empowerment and a binding conviction that sisters can do it for themselves, even if the sisters are not what they at first seemed to be.

The story is one of female friendship, gradually turned into dangerous obsession and manipulation. But if you were to lump The Goddesses with something akin to Single White Female, you would be sadly oversimplifying it. Nancy, Huntley’s main character, is an outwardly tranquil housewife who has been wronged by her husband Chuck and his adultery.
Not to mention his pitiful halfhearted attempts to remain sober, which more often than not, fail miserably. We can laugh at Chuck and his tries at ‘swaggerness’ when he inserts into his repertoire, phrases like “Whoa, Nelly” especially when his sons are in the room. Conversely though, we can’t help shaking our heads and thinking that perhaps Nancy deserves much better.
In the throes of her disappointment and a family that’s slowly breaking apart, its rupture accelerating the constant acting out of her twin teenage boys, Chuck and Nancy move the family to Hawaii as an endeavor to start over and leave the memories of their failing marriage behind. Huntley’s descriptions of Hawaii are astounding, understandable since along with California, it’s the place she calls home. The lush forests and imposing volcanoes that undoubtedly are her familiar terrain, become the backdrop for Nancy’s quest, a new chance to just be, to begin a new life.
It’s here, in this lavish Elysium that she meets Ana, a yoga teacher abundant with new age speak that Huntley keeps intelligently on the other side of becoming commonplace and stereotypical. This works just fine because we quickly learn that Ana is anything but predictable.
In The Goddesses, there’s a recognizable twinge of Zoe Heller’s Notes on a Scandal as a commentary on the female psyche when a friendship is cemented on a need to dominate and exert power play. And although in John Fowles’ The Magus there is no observation on the nature of female obsession, Fowles’ main character, Nicholas Urfe is swiftly and systematically led to madness (coincidentally on an island) by a powerful and wealthy benefactor.
As Ana and Nancy form a fast and unusual bond, the latter begins pushing her family aside to make room for the stranger who begins referring to herself as Nancy’s “soulmate” and her “twin.” This means dinners missed, less time with her sons who are dealing with demons of their own. Plus, a marriage, that far from being on the road to recovery seems even more cracked at the seams with Ana’s intrusion, as she constantly plants doubts about Chuck in Nancy’s head. The intrusion becomes even more disturbing when Ana moves in with the family as Chuck is moved swiftly out. When Ana leaves a snake in Chuck’s car, she tells Nancy cheekily: “So biblical, right?” which presumably alludes to Chuck’s past adultery.
But there is an interesting reversal in The Goddesses, opposed to other narratives of obsession among women either in literature or in film. It’s not only Ana who absorbs Nancy’s essence; Nancy absorbs Ana’s just as much. We see a void in Nancy from the beginning, which Ana is quick to fill with her abstract way of looking at life and at her own actions.
They feed off each other because they recognize in an astounding way that one has something the other needs, and if anything, it turns a potential story of victim and stalker into mutual self-insertion. This is especially telling in a scene when Ana is remarking on their apparent similarities: “I’m going to call you Nan from now on. No more Nancy. And don’t you see why? Don’t you see how the letters of our names match up perfectly? Nan and Ana! Yin and yang!”
The complicated dynamic between the two women is only exacerbated by Nancy’s refusal to see the truth about Ana even when it’s hitting her in the face. Because the narrative is told in reverse, we know that Nancy has opened her eyes to the reality of who her new spiritual double really is, evidenced in her reflection of a conversation in which Ana relayed the tale of a frog that is put in a pot of boiling water as opposed to the frog that is placed in the pot in which the heat is gradually increased. “In one,” Ana explains, “the frog will jump; in the other, the frog will boil.” Nancy questions why at the time of that conversation, she didn’t think to herself: “Jump.”
The Goddesses has an atmosphere of suspense that almost makes it into a theatrical psychological thriller. As the novel moves forward, we come to realize that there is something really wrong with Ana, something that goes beyond her need for Nancy’s sole attention. But we also grasp onto the fact that Nancy is the custodian of a life-long secret which makes her vulnerable to Ana’s subterfuge. This is not revealed until the end, when we finally understand why Nancy willfully closed her eyes and ears to the many clues pointing to Ana’s true intentions.
With The Goddesses, Swan Huntley validated major missteps involving lack of character development and fortitude in We Could Be Beautiful. Her second novel more than compensates in presenting not just a scary revelation of obsession and the consequences of being blind to it, but also the possibility of redeeming one’s mistakes, along with the beauty of reinvention and true Namaste.

Nice quick read. I enjoyed the location of the novel. I have to say, I wasn't really a fan of any of the characters in the book and kept waiting for the moment Nancy was going to toughen up. I did flip pages pretty quick and loved the pace of the novel. Super quick and easy read.