Because I enjoy reading family dramas so much, Summer Cannibals left me terribly disappointed. While a number of reviews alluded to the idea that none of the characters were likable and that they were all, perhaps, morally bankrupt, none of that bothered me.
Hobson has no responsibility to write for anyone’s set agenda and no responsibility to make her characters psychologically attractive role models. Indeed, isn’t self-indulgent voyeurism and validation a large part of the enjoyment of reading novels with family drama dynamics? A sense of, “Oh, wow, and here I thought my house was a hot mess, but these folks take the cake”?
No, my annoyance with Summer Cannibals was that it asked the reader for too big of an investment in too many plots and subplots, and it was hard to figure out whether one was going to be more important later in the book, or whether it was going to fall by the wayside (How necessary were Margaret’s collages, really? And the garden tours? It was as if the most significant parts of these came and went in a few paragraphs).
There was a lot of description and storytelling, but for me, not enough action to move this along.
Many thanks to NetGalley for providing me with this book and the opportunity to give an honest review.

A dysfunctional, broken, but wealthy and privileged family reunites under crisis, on the eve of the father's self-indulgent, ill-fated garden tour. This book is a prolonged snapshot--a portrait of an atypical family, with a terrible secret. The short time frame of the story allows you to wallow a bit in their upsetting reality, without the anxiety of redeeming these characters, because they are all far from redemption.

This is Melanie Hobson's first novel. This story is about a broken family, broken hearts, broken vows, broken flowers, and a broken window. Three sisters come back to their childhood home in Hamilton, Ontario due to a family crisis. One sister is pregnant and suffers from pre-natal depression. She comes home in hope to get away from her husband and find family support. One sister takes advantage of the crisis to come home to help and get away from her routine. One sister comes back home to see if she can rekindle a teenage flame. The parents are strange and their story is even more strange. This book had great elements to become a solid story. The relationship between the three sisters is very interesting and I wish the author would have expanded further on that aspect and spend less time on the parents' story. Melanie Hobson's writing is great and I am looking forward to seeing more books from this author.

Thank you Netgalley and Grove Atlantic for this ARC. Summer Cannibals will be in your favourite bookstore on September 11, 2018.

This wasn't the book for me. I should start by saying that Melanie Hobson is an extremely talented writer and this book is beautifully written... My review certainly isn't a reflection on her talent. I just didn't like the plot and had a difficult time getting engaged in the story.

I admit, I was originally sucked in by the beautiful cover and the synopsis made the book sound like something I'd enjoy: A family coming back together again with the children now grownups and everyone with their own problems. My problem is that nothing really hooked me to any of the characters. It felt like there were too many of them and they were all pretty "blah" and miserable humans. I never feel like I have to actually like characters to enjoy a book (sometimes it's more fun if I don't like them!), but not only did I not like any of these, but I just didn't care that much about them.

There's lots of kind of strange sexual stuff going on in the book, too... I'm definitely not a prude, but I think because I didn't feel connected to any of the characters, the sexual stuff felt really creepy.

Again, Melanie is a talented writer and the prose is stunning. For the right person, I know this would be a lovely book. It's just not in line with the type of book I enjoy.

Wow what have I just made myself read? It is a story where three grown up daughters return home to see each other. It’s no wonder they are as screwed up as they are with parents like this! 'They were handsome and they knew it to be true, and theirs was a world that rewarded such things.'
I spent the whole time thinking, I must find one redeeming feature in these people. They are beautiful and spoilt and made me happy to be normal. I wouldn’t particularly recommend this book and give it 2 stars.

Quickly I realized this book was not for me. I had a really tough time connecting with the characters of the story. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for this book for my honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.

My hopes were so high for this one. The cover is porn. The title is enticing. The synopsis engaging. But...I did not like this book hardly at all.

After struggling to read the book, I can't really say that I could sum up the story. None of it really seemed complete if that makes sense? Hobson had so many little stories about each character going on that I don't really feel like much of anything happened. And what did happen, I couldn't quite comprehend or understand the point. Hell, I am not even sure what the point of this book is. Or if there really is one.

I hated each and every character presented. Maybe this is the issue. I couldn't connect with a single one. I like weird. I like messed up. I enjoy a wild fictional character. But I had no reason to like any of them. They all sucked. And therefore, I had no real reason to care about this story. If any of them had one redeeming quality, maybe this would be a different review. But it is difficult to convince a reader to enjoy a story if they can't connect on any single level.

I had to work really hard to finish this story. It was a chore to complete. However, I do think Hobson is a gifted writer (hence the 2 stars). But this story was not for me. And in all honesty, I would not recommend.

Thank you NetGalley for the Advance Copy.

I found it very difficult to finish this book. The characters were all despicable and self-serving. I kept hoping for some redeeming quality - I guess there was a little of that in the way the sisters tried to stick together, but they couldn't even do that with any success.

As other reviewers have mentioned, the apparent acceptance of domestic violence was very disturbing. All families go through their ups and downs, but this family seemed to be all down.

Thank you to NetGalley for the free book.

'They were handsome and they knew it to be true, and theirs was a world that rewarded such things.'

David and Margaret Blackford are waiting for the return of their three daughters, George, Jax and Pippa. Something is wrong with the youngest, Pippa who is pregnant with her fifth child living in New Zealand, and she has phoned asking to come home. Naturally this troubles Margaret, already exasperated with her husband’s ‘mania’ about his grand garden tour and the hordes of people who are meant to arrive. Not even his daughter’s need can make him back down from his egotistical plans. As she is consumed by worry, “She saw her husband’s deep sleeps as a kind of betrayal. Just another example of his overall cruelty.” Easy sleep, as he certainly isn’t tormented with the worries she has. She knows his tour is bound to fail. When she hasn’t been working on her collages, giving her days a sense of order, release he has been running over her for years. She is an artists, but a repressed one, as a doctor’s wife. Their marriage is a cannibalism itself. What begins in the first few chapters as a simple, slow story about a cocky aging man acting crazed and obsessive over his garden tour spirals into a disturbing erotic game between the couple when a ‘delectable’ young woman enters the scene.

Erotica isn’t shocking in and of itself, but the exception here is that they play out these fantasies, this weird new threesome of sorts while their adult daughters are in the sprawling mansion on the shores of Lake Ontario. One of which, Pippa, is a wreck and in desperate need of help. Pregnant, ready to give birth at any moment! Deeply lost and depressed with secrets from her childhood that she has never confided, which may well explain the trajectory of her bohemian life, as well as the ‘progressive’ relationship she and her husband have. Pippa, whose always sort of floated along and just taken life as it came, wondering now where the guidance and care was that she desperately needed. Georgina, a professor of arts history arrives already keenly aware of the simmering tension between her parents, thinking of her own child and all the effort she put into helping him. Realizing she and her son could use this break from each other, while she is home helping Pippa, with no other family needing her attention. Georgina, though, thinks of Pippa as very good at manipulation, resenting that even as an adult and far away she was still ‘making them all jump.’ Then she sees her at the airport and is shocked by her appearance and realize for the first time that maybe it really is something more than ‘drama’. Jax “self-satisfied” (if you asked Georgina) back home is remembering the bars, bands and sneaking out, her little sister tagging along when they were young, surely she just needs to shake things up, remind Pippa of wild fun! Her sister’s problems don’t consume her as much as the state of her marriage and an old flame’s whispered promise of the past. She is sneaking away again before long, once again indulging in pleasures.

Regret, shame, guilt, what ifs and a dish or two of poisonous revenge you have one heck of a messed up family. But as lost as Pippa is, for whom they are https://wordpress.com/post/bookstalkerblog.wordpress.com/12135all gathered to help, it’s Margaret and David that are twisted and disturbed.

I am still not sure how I feel about this book, at times uncomfortable, often irritated by David and his whining about the son that never was and exhausted by Margaret, who really I wanted to slap half the time, particularly when she finds out what happened to her youngest Pippa. How can a mother be blasé about such things? The dynamic between husband and wife, well if handsome entitled people turn into this, I think I’ll take struggle to wealthy boredom. Nothing about the girls was shocking compared to their parents antics, game. Read it, but it isn’t all pretty flowers and stampeding garden visitors. I didn’t go away feeling warm and fuzzy about family, I felt like telling Pippa (all the sisters really) run away from that family home before it swallows you, or seduces you like Goldilocks with its opulence (you have to read to understand that reference).

Publication Date: September 11, 2018

Grove Atlantic

3.5- In a mansion on the banks of Lake Ontario, a wealthy family comes together when one of the three daughters, Pippa returns from abroad. The other two sisters, Georgina and Jax, return home to see her. Their father, a narcissistic patriarch, refuses to cancel his planned garden tour for his daughters’ homecoming. Then the secrets come out.

This family certainly has their share of problems and unresolved dreams. I found them all to be very unlikeable. The normalization of domestic violence by the characters was also very disturbing to me. The David portions made me extremely uncomfortable and the spider electrocution early on in the book made me put it down for nearly a week before I could bring myself to continue reading.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free copy of this ebook in exchange for an unbiased review.

The description for this book sounded interesting. Three grown women return to their family's lake-side home in Ontario. One of them is about to give birth and struggling with her future. The other two are there for support. But, we see that each of them is rather selfish in their motives. And, their parents are also involved in their own issues. I was hoping for a bit more of a benign story than the one that ensued. A bit too much violence and sexual "adventures" for me to tolerate, I'm afraid. I didn't have a good feeling after finishing this book. Maybe that's the intent, but it's just not my kind of book.

Have you ever thought that your family was the most dysfunctional family to ever exist?Most of us have probably had that thought once or twice. In reality, our families are not struggling with their relationships quite as much as the family in Summer Cannibals. They are all a hot mess - together and separately.

Why are they such emotional wrecks? I cannot tell you because it would ruin the surprise. I will tell you that the father is a narcissist and possibly a sociopath.

Everyone - mother, father plus their three daughters - Georgina, Jax and Pippa- are home for a week in order to help Pippa through a crisis. Ok, the dad is only around because he had a garden tour scheduled, which he refuses to cancel. He's not really there to help his daughter. Typical narcissist.

It was an interesting story. It's definitely a reminder that all is not what it seems. Perfect looking families are not perfect by any means. I'm so thankful that my family is not like this family. We may be dysfunctional but we're not cruel to each other.



If I had to rate it, I would give it 4 out of 5 stars.





Summer Cannibals by Melanie Hobson will be available on Amazon in August or September 2018.