The Wrong Family is a crazy thriller about a normal American family. It's hard to review this story without giving to much away! This book was hard to put down and I will be reading more by Tarryn Fisher in the future. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my ARC.

An interesting plot with a few unexpected twists thrown in.

But other than that? Nothing. I really struggled to enjoy this book. The characters felt flat and the story seemed to focus on the details when nothing was happening, then rush through the action. The end result, an underwhelming read.

2 stars ⭐⭐

Special thanks to Netgalley for providing me with this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

I had heard so many good things about this one so I was super excited to get my hands on a copy. It was okay but unfortunately it didn’t live up to the hype for me.

I felt like this book had potential but the storyline just ended up being over the top and too unrealistic for me. I found it hard to immerse myself in the story as I found it very unbelievable. I also couldn’t connect to the characters for this reason. This was a slow burn which I don’t believe worked in this story’s favour, it definitely felt like it should be more fast paced than it was.

Book Blurb…
From the wickedly dark mind of bestselling author Tarryn Fisher, The Wrong Family is a taut new thriller that's riddled with twists in all the right places.
Have you ever been wrong about someone?
Juno was wrong about Winnie Crouch.
Before moving in with the Crouch family, Juno thought Winnie and her husband, Nigel, had the perfect marriage, the perfect son - the perfect life. Only now that she's living in their beautiful house, she sees the cracks in the crumbling facade are too deep to ignore.
Still, she isn't one to judge. After her grim diagnosis, the retired therapist simply wants a place to live out the rest of her days in peace. But that peace is shattered the day Juno overhears a chilling conversation between Winnie and Nigel...
She shouldn't get involved.
She really shouldn't.
But this could be her chance to make a few things right.
Because if you thought Juno doesn't have a secret of her own, then you were wrong about her too.

My thoughts…
Wow! What a fabulously constructed narrative, an intriguing storyline and brilliant characterisation. (How do some people live with themselves!!)
Juno is not a likeable character, but I understood her conflict and I felt for her.
Set in an ‘interesting’ house I would never want to own, this story goes very deep — basement deep!!

This book was a bit of a let down for me as I had such high expectations. I found it hard to connect to the characters. I found the storyline to be a little over the top and unrealistic. Very slow paced. Something just didnt sit right with this book.

What horrible people. But what a credit to the author to paint such vivid pictures of who they are and relate their interactions so clearly. This is one of those white knuckle books which keeps you guessing the whole way through. Reminded me a bit of Karen Rose’s work.

A suspenseful story, with some dysfunctional characters and several plot line coming together at the end.
I found it to be quite often a creepy read told from the POV of both Juno and Winnie, but it drew me in and kept me hooked right to the end.

Thank you to @netgalley and @harlequinaus for this digital copy to read and review!

The Wrong Family? Try The Dark Twisted Unlikeable Wrong Family! While I liked the character studies as an academic exercise, as well as the sheer unconventionality of the protagonists, I couldn't really connect to them on a reader level.

Don't minsunderstand me: this book is a good read if you like plot-centred books. There are plenty of twists: just when you think you have it figured out, the story moves in a different direction. But if you need to like at least some of the people in the story world you're inhabiting, you might find it a challenging read.

High hopes for this one, but unfortunately this book just wasn't for me. I made it half way but just lost interest to continue on. The plot was kind of boring and I wasn't connecting with the characters sadly.

The Wrong Family piqued my curiosity from the first page and the further I read the more curious I became, not only about how the story would end but also about the characters.
This story is told through the eyes of two women, 67 year-old Juno, who is homeless and dying, and Winnie, who is married to Nigel and has a teenage son, Sam. Secrets, guilt, suspicion and lies are central themes and help to make this a compelling read. I had absolutely no idea how this story would end, nor how the characters would find their way there as the plot is packed with unexpected twists. This book has made for an absolutely fascinating read.

Thank you to Netgalley and Harlequin Australia for the opportunity to read this one.

Unfortunately, I am undecided whether I enjoyed it or not.

I loved the secrets, twists and turns, and the living situation creeped me out. However, I found the story a VERY slow burn and sometimes the “everyday” parts of the story felt dragged out.

I loved the backstory/flashbacks as we dive deeper into the secrets of Juno and Winnie. On the other hand, I did not like either of those characters.

I felt, in the last quarter, the story got very dramatic, very quickly. I was presented with a thrown in storyline and feel that the quick wrap-up was slightly unsatisfying.

So, in short, there were things that I really enjoyed and things that I really did not enjoy.

I’ll be honest if I hadn’t had to do a review for this book I probably would have stopped reading it early on as for the first third of the book I had no idea what was going on! But I pushed through and things started to make more sense towards the end and the action ending brought my rating up by a star. I have seen mixed reviews on this one so please don’t let my review discourage you from picking this up yourself if you are interested in reading!
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Thank you to @netgalley and @harlequinaus for this digital copy to read and review! The Wrong FamIly is available now.

I took this to the beach and couldn't put it down! I love the way Tarryn Fisher creates her characters and am always down to go on a twisted ride with them. With those dark thriller vibes that I love, The Wrong Family is a gripping read that cements Fisher as a thriller Queen.

Definitely recommend to anyone looking for an all-consuming, dark and fun read.

Thank you #netgalley and #harlequinaustralia for the arc of this book.

The Wrong Family follows the story of two woman, Winnie and Juno. Winnie has an outwardly perfect life. She has the perfect house in the perfect suburb, a loving husband and a well behaved teenage son. But things are not always as they seem. Winnie and her husband are fighting more than ever about a mistake that happened years ago and her son is rebelling against her strict rules.
Juno has been living a tough life. She is dealing with a chronic illness, she has been homeless since being released from prison and she is estranged from her husband and children.
Their two stories collide when Juno finds herself living in the Crouches household. She listens and learns all she can about the family and believes she has figured out Winnies secret. And she's pretty sure she is the only one who can do somethimg about it, consequences be damned.

Several themes are interwoven into this story which makes for a compelling read. The twist halfway through was spine chilling! Very well written and thought through.

Thanks to #netgalley for the ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review. It took me a moment to realise that Juno was living in the same house as this family. Once I got that I was intrigued as to how it was all going to unfold. The twists came thick and fast in the last few chapters of this book. It was an ok read, nothing really stand out or page turning in my opinion. I did enjoy how it ended though. ⭐⭐⭐ #tarrynfisher #thewrongfamily #netgalley #tea_sipping_bookworm #goodreads #litsy #amazonkindle #bookqueen #bookstagram #thriller

Have you ever been wrong about someone?

Juno was wrong about Winnie Crouch.

Before moving in with the Crouch family, Juno thought Winnie and her husband, Nigel, had the perfect marriage, the perfect son - the perfect life. Only now that she's living in their beautiful house, she sees the cracks in the crumbling facade are too deep to ignore.

Still, she isn't one to judge. After her grim diagnosis, the retired therapist simply wants a place to live out the rest of her days in peace. But that peace is shattered the day Juno overhears a chilling conversation between Winnie and Nigel...

She shouldn't get involved.

She really shouldn't.

But this could be her chance to make a few things right.

Because if you thought Juno doesn't have a secret of her own, then you were wrong about her too.

I really did not enjoy this book. The character development was just not there and I really disliked the characters.
The story was boring and very predictable at times.

I love the author’s writing style but unfortunately this book was just not for me.

Wow! It is very hard to do a review of this book and not give the story away!
It is very much a story about families and how they survive. But wow! So much more!
A missing baby is the start. But not is all as it seems. It ends with lives lost and families broken.

EXCERPT: She tried to understand what she was reading. It was a blog. She could see several blog titles in the box that said DRAFTS, all of them yet to be published.

'You've been busy,' she heard herself say out loud. Snooping was wrong, but what was the harm in taking a little peak - it wasn't like she was some stranger off the street. Once upon a time, she'd been a bonafide psychologist, for God's sake. She felt a wave of excitement that didn't have anything to do with being a psychologist. It was a familiar feeling; she'd spent thirty years digging and plowing through people's brains - learning their secrets and hearing the ugliest desires of their hearts. She may be retired, but her lust for knowledge had never gone away.

The first draft Juno clicked on was titled: Pretty Sure I'm Adopted.

Sam had said this to her in the park, too, and she'd responded lightly. In a clinical setting, Juno would brush this off, too; adolescents went through a period where they felt disconnected from everything, even the people who loved them most. Juno compared it to a young lion learning to roar, picking fights, feeling insecure but acting volatile.

But this particular blog entry had never made it past one sentence. Sam, new to adult words, had described his feelings in one staggering fritz of emotion: 'Wolves know when they are being raised by bears.'

She stared at the words. Rolled them around in her head, where they gelled together with his cryptic phrases in the park, the words in Winnie's journal. 'Day after day, it eats me.'

ABOUT 'THE WRONG FAMILY': Have you ever been wrong about someone?

Juno was wrong about Winnie Crouch.

Before moving in with the Crouch family, Juno thought Winnie and her husband, Nigel, had the perfect marriage, the perfect son—the perfect life. Only now that she’s living in their beautiful house, she sees the cracks in the crumbling facade are too deep to ignore.

Still, she isn’t one to judge. After her grim diagnosis, the retired therapist simply wants a place to live out the rest of her days in peace. But that peace is shattered the day Juno overhears a chilling conversation between Winnie and Nigel…

She shouldn’t get involved.

She really shouldn’t.

But this could be her chance to make a few things right.

Because if you thought Juno didn’t have a secret of her own, then you were wrong about her, too.

MY THOUGHTS: The Wrong Family is the first book I have read by Tarryn Fisher, and now I can't wait to read her others!

Fisher slowly builds the tension towards a catastrophic climax that is so entirely plausible, it is frightening. The Crouch adults have a twisted relationship - codependent - a secret keeping them irretrievably bound together. Juno, who lives in the Crouchs' home - not that they are aware of this - believes that she knows what that secret is, and sets out to put the wrong to right.

The characters, while not likeable, other than Sam, are compelling. Winnie finds everything too much. There is always too much spice in her food, too much mustard on her sandwich, and her husband wears too much cologne. Sometimes she actively looks for things to be upset about, as if a lack of problems in her life is a problem in itself. Nigel, on the other hand, prefers to pretend that nothing is wrong. He is quite bland in comparison with Winnie. He hates colour, and can be outwardly quite submissive, while inside he is actually quite a strong personality. Juno, whom only Sam knows about - but even he doesn't know that she lives in their house - likes to be involved in people's lives and has been that way since she was a child. She delights in eavesdropping and interfering. And Dakota, Winnie's brother, a mentally unstable substance abuser who moves in with the Crouch family when his wife kicks him out. He does, on occasion, catch fleeting glimpses of Juno, but believes her to be a ghost. Winnie and Juno are alike in the fact that both exceedingly self-centred and unable to see beyond their own needs.

The Wrong Family is a novel about some extremely dysfunctional people who, when their lives collide, set off a cataclysmic chain of events.

Strongly recommended.

⭐⭐⭐⭐.2

#TheWrongFamily #NetGalley

THE AUTHOR: I would like to write a novel that every, single person loves, but not even J.K. Rowling could do that.

Instead, I try to write stories that pull on people's emotions. I believe that sadness is the most powerful emotion, and swirled with regret the two become a dominating force. I love villains. Three of my favorites are Mother Gothel, Gaston and the Evil Queen who all suffered from a pretty wicked case of vanity (like me). I like to make these personality types the center of my stories.

I love rain, Coke, Starbucks and sarcasm. I hate bad adjectives and the word "smolder". If you read my book-I love you. If you hate my book-I still love you, but please don't be mean to me; I'm half badass, half cry baby.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Harlequin Australia, MIRA, for providing a digital ARC of The Wrong Family by Tarryn Fisher for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

For an explanation of my rating system please refer to my Goodreads.com profile page or the about page on sandysbookaday.wordpress.com

This review and others are also published on Twitter, Amazon, Instagram and my webpage

With thanks to NetGalley and Harlequin Australia for a digital copy of this book, all opinions expressed here are my own.

The Wrong Family by Tarryn Fisher is a must for fans of her novel The Wives. It is dark and twisty, leaving you guessing til the very end.

Juno lives with the Crouch family and is determined to fix them. The Crouch family (with the exception of Samuel, the teenager) have never met Juno.

I have found with books by this author you either love them or you don’t. Unfortunately this wasn’t the book for me. I spent most of it confused about what was happening to the point where I didn’t really care about end game.

An average 3 star rating. I will post to Amazon and Instagram on release day, the 6th January 2021.

I enjoyed The Wrong Family by Tarryn Fisher more than expected. I think I'd assumed there would be some laborious backstory that resulted in Juno going to live with the Crouch family. That she obsessively idolised them in some single-white-female-stalker way (which she only does a little) or she's coerced or kidnapped or similar. 

But that's not at all the case. And the circumstances involved are probably one of the best parts of the plot. Certainly NOT expected; something I didn't see coming.

The book unfolds from the points of view of Juno - in her late 60s and a former psychologist who's only fairly recently relocated to Seattle; and Winnie - a wife and mother to a teenage boy.

It opens in the aftermath of a fight between Winnie and her husband Nigel, as Juno is gingerly picking her way through shattered glass in the kitchen. Remnants of something being thrown or dropped the night before.

I liked that Fisher drops us into the middle of the action as it allayed my fears of a lengthy introduction or courting between Juno and the Crouch family. Instead their relationship is quite vague. We learn that Nigel has built an addition onto the house to rent out because of money issues. So them coming together seems entirely without guile or design.

It occurred to me I was spending quite some time trying to figure out who the 'bad guy' was between the always-sparring Winnie and Nigel. Juno seems to obviously be on Nigel's side and describes Winnie as a 'too-much girl'.

But because we're in Winnie's head we know she loves her husband but fears he no longer loves her. And we know she regrets that she picks fights with him and struggles to apologise later.

Juno has the most sympathy however for the couple's thirteen year old son Sam. He's confided in Juno so she's worried about him. We soon learn she's kinda meddlesome for a therapist - something which got her into trouble in the past - and here she takes it upon herself to try to 'fix' things.

As Fisher shares more about Juno's past it's hard not to feel some sympathy for her and where she is now. But much of the unfolding plot here is akin to watching the proverbial car crash in slow motion. We readers can see things being misconstrued and misunderstood but powerless to stop it.

I must confess to being fairly shocked by the conclusion. I'm a strong believer in justice being served, in right vs wrong rather than karma or similar. So I felt a little affronted, or perhaps just sad at the lack of closure for all parties.

I very much enjoyed however that Fisher includes a tremendous amount of insight here. Some of it is via Juno's observations, and I guess that's the therapist in her, watching those around her when they're unaware; but there's also a high level of self-awareness reflected in the characters themselves.

There are several ethical dilemmas and questionable actions on offer here and I note the book includes some questions for discussion so this would be an excellent bookclub selection.

This was certainly a surprise read for me and far more enjoyable than I was expecting - though I'm not sure why. Fisher's written several other novels so I must seek them out when time permits as I like 'clever' psychological thrillers.