I finished it and am not sure why since I disliked it from the beginning. I have read and enjoyed most of Rachel Joyce's books especially Harold Fry and Queenie Hennessy so was looking forward to this one. Unfortunately I didn't resonate with either the topic or the characters and had an hard time believing it was written by Joyce. Eccentric Vic Kemp was 84, widowed since the four children were small and a fairly famous and somewhat pornographic painter. His 4 adult children were shocked when he married a 27 yo and moved to his villa in Italy. When work came of his death, the 4 traveled to Italy to determine the cause of death and the location of his last painting and his will.. Each handled things differently and it caused a serious rift in the previously good relationships. I think the story may have been better told had each child had narrated a section. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC copy of this book.

Not at all what I was expecting. This was a slower book for me, but I constantly wanted to know what was next. When Vic, the patriarch of the family suddenly announces his engagement, his adult children are instantly suspicious. When he suddenly dies, they jump to murder and all flock to their family home in Italy to investigate. They find that Vic was all that tied them together.

Absolutely fantastic plot! Could not put the book down once I began reading it. Cannot wait for it to be released. I will recommend it to everyone I know!

**Features:**
- Family drama with a little bit of mystery
- Explores complex family dynamics, love, grief, and identity
- Set predominantly in Italy

**Synopsis:**

Renowned artist Vic Kemp is almost as well known for his drinking and flirting as he is for his actual art. When his wife died young, Vic’s four children all stepped up to try filling the void she left behind. Now adults, Netta, Susan, Goose (Gustav), and Iris all try hard to maintain their close bond and continue looking after their father. That is why all four are left in shock when their now seventy six-year old father announces his betrothal to a twenty seven-year old woman named Bella-Mae whom they have never met. As he leaves for the family’s Italian villa with his new wife to finish what he claims will be his masterpiece, the siblings are left with more questions than answers. When Vic is then discovered dead in the lake with no sign of his masterpiece, the siblings join Bella-Mae both to grieve and find the answers they seek. However, without Vic at their center, the threads that keep them together start to fray.

**Thoughts:**

When I originally picked up this book, I thought it was going to be another murder mystery in an idyllic location with a little family drama on the side. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find this more focused on the complicated relationships between the different siblings. The story is narrated in the third person, but it rotates who it ‘zooms in’ on so that we get to experience everyone’s perspective as the story develops. Joyce really excels at illustrating the complicated dynamics of a family that is tight knit but to a point where certain issues or feelings go unvoiced for fear of weakening that bond. Even before the true drama of the story starts, you can sense the tension that lurks just beneath the surface. In both positive and negative ways, Vic is the foundation for how this family operates. I found the way Vic’s death provided the opportunity and freedom to re-examine things in a more honest light and the resulting fallout really compelling and well handled. If you like a good family drama, this is definitely the book for you.

Though I found the characters complex and interesting, I can’t say that I ever truly liked and/or was rooting for any of them. Where this doesn’t really bother me, I think in this case it is related to my one, slightly bigger issue with the book. To me, it was never clear what the end ‘goal’ was, even for the individual characters. This led to what felt like a natural conclusion to the story before the book itself was finished. While I am ultimately satisfied with its true ending, there just seemed to be some uncertainty on where to land this plane and we got lost in that conundrum a couple of times throughout the story.

The Homemade God is a moving family drama: Vic Kemp, father of four adult children is unexpectedly dead. They hear the news shortly after learning their septuagenarian father has married a 27-year-old. Vic was rich, renowned. So, of course, his children wonder if new wife Bella-Mae had something to do with his untimely death.

Goose, Netta. Iris and Susan descend on their family Italian lake home determined to meet Bella-Mae and get answers. Until now, the siblings have been incredibly close. Also with Vic. They are united by grief and confusion. And then, the mystery of Vic’s death drags on and each sibling’s journey forward is an opportunity to splinter off, further from one another.

We get just enough of each sibling to care about them, enough about Vic to both enjoy and be disgusted by his ego, and very little of Bella-Mae (which I think is intentional: is she a sad widow or someone who killed an old husband for a paycheck?).

The story is heavy and lovely. I enjoyed getting to know each of the characters and watching this, often sad and painful, story unfold. Highly recommended. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. 4.5 stars rounded down.

Favorite quotes:
“ this was how he learned a new truth about love. You can be overmastered by the most powerful feelings for a person, and yet they can happily exist without so much as giving you a second thought.”

“Traveling toward the dead, it turned out, was not like traveling at all. Because how could you move toward someone who was not there? It was a no-win kind of journey, where the end point was not a gain but a subtraction.”

“She was beginning to wonder why, when you lost someone you loved, you started missing all the other people you’d loved. As if grief was a hole and, once it was there, any dead person could come along and jump into it too.”

Loved the writing style but the story was a bit too slow moving for me. The characters were multifaceted and quite interesting though!

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

You just know when you pick up an incredible book that's going to be a wonderful read from the first sentence. The homemade God by Rachel Joyce is just that kind of book. It is a wonderful and delicious read. Four children of a very famous painter, all conglomerate on his villa after his death. They are of course in shock as they meet his very young wife Bella-Mae. He was 71 she is 27. Lots of questions here were asked by the children. The children are all older, and they do feel that Bella-Mae had something to do with his death. But did she? He had lost a lot of weight and he was constantly drinking a special tea that had a unique odor, but did she have anything to do with his death? This is an incredible book that had me captured from the first word to the very last. I loved it, and I highly recommend it.

Yet again Rachel Joyce creates such memorable characters that I find myself thinking of them long after I have finished the book. If you love a character driven book, rather than plot driven, then this is a book for you. I found myself immersed in the story of 4 siblings and the relationships between themselves and their father. When their famous artist father marries a woman almost 50 years younger it affects their lives in ways they can not imagine.

I finished it! I’m not sure why but I did. When I first started reading this book, I thought the premise was fairly interesting. The story is about three sisters and a brother. Their mother died when the youngest sister was born and their father has been alone. He’s a rather eccentric artist. The characters are a little strange to me and the story is even stranger. I finished it and I’m glad. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read an advance copy for my honest review.

As a big fan of Joyce's previous books, I was delighted to get the opportunity to read an advance copy of this book. This was quite a departure from her previous books, but I loved it. I found it a very intense read, and the book was much more of a family drama than a mystery. The dysfunctional family was fascinating, and the family and their interrelationships dramatically evolved over the course of the book. The author did a great job bringing the unique characters and locale to life. I particularly loved the way Joyce ended the book. This would be a perfect choice for book discussion groups. I highly recommend it.

I did. not enjoy this book at all. I don’t usually read mysteries, I thought this might be a good one. There was no mystery here at all , even though the description of the book made it sound like there was. Single father Vic has 3 daughters and a son, their mother died young. Vic is a successful artist, even without much talent and the children’s upbringing is not priority. Each of them cope with this situation their own way. When Vic suddenly dies, the 4 siblings gather in Italy, where they used to spend vacations at a villa and where their father died. Now they try to figure out what happened and how to go forward.
The character developments were good, but I found that was the only good thing. The story line was odd, branching in too many directions, some that were not followed through and some appeared suddenly.
I couldn’t wait to finish this novel, I was bored most of the time.
I received a complimentary copy, opinions are my own.

This is a complicated family story that involves betrayal, art, love, addiction. It took a long time to finally come together but I think was worth the ride. A few characters left me asking a lot of questions that never got resolved. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Rachel Joyce has a gift for writing quirky characters and making them seem like ordinary folks. Perhaps our neighbors are more offbeat or peculiar than we think. The Kemp family: three sisters, one brother, one late mother and one larger-than-life artist father... these people can be normal one minute and totally unpredictable the next. The family structure, their father's fame (or infamy), the loss of one parent, and the huge expectations each person seems to inflict on herself or himself, all conspire to bring the reader into a world of great passions and mystery. Throw in a young girlfriend of the 70-year-old artist, an Italian villa on a lake, a few husbands/boyfriends, a sudden death and lots of unanswered questions, and you've got a book that's difficult to put down. No, I never figured out what would happen next, but I especially enjoyed Rachel Joyce's last four chapters, wrapping up loose ends and bringing some peace to a family drama that threatened to break every single heart.

This book essentially chronicles a family navigating the death of their patriarch. I expected there to be a bit more thrill and mystery after reading the summary, but that is not the true focus of the story. The main theme is around the siblings and their relationships to one another, their father, and others. I really enjoyed the writing style. I typically really enjoy family centered novels, but I found myself less engaged than usual. I think this was in part due to the climax occurring, and the book continuing on from a point I felt it should have wrapped up. I also didn't connect to the characters as much as I would have liked Regardless, I did enjoy reading this complicated family story.

Thank you to Random House Publishing. The Dial Press, and NetGalley for the ARC.

Mystery, family dynamics and a grand mystery with great relational aspects in the story. I have never read anything Rachel Joyce has written but, I found myself looking at her backlog once I finished The Homemade God.

Didn't enjoy the characters in this one despite an interesting premise.
Not much happened for soooo long and didn't really understand why. Slow pacing and bleh characters. Not for me.

I finished this one a few days ago, but I could not make up my mind about how to review it.
On the one hand, it is beautifully written, on the other hand, it is quite densely written and it took me quite a while to wade through. We spend a lot of time with some of the characters, yet at least one of the pivotal characters remained a cypher. I think this was by design, but with the amount of time spent with the sisters’ interiority, it seemed odd that the focal point of the plot was so enigmatic. The brother was also a tad opaque, though not as much as the second wife.
I also found the deceased father a bit hard to get my head around, he seemed like a total dick. It was therefore hard for me to relate to the adult children-surely at least one of them would have been to therapy and realized this by now? Perhaps I found it all a bit triggering (as the kids say); I am so over hearing about other people’s daddy issues.
My biggest issue, however, was with. the pacing. There is a fairly large middle section where nothing happens, I caught myself thinking “Could we move this along already?”. Then, when something finally does happen, the book wraps up in a somewhat cursory manner, we even skip ahead a few years. Again, this may be by design, but it did not work for me.
In the end, I had to ask myself: “Was this an enjoyable read?”
Unfortunately, despite the author’s evident skill and technique, I have to answer “No”.

This is a 25% plot, 75% character driven read about a wealthy family and how a tragic event shapes the relationship of the four siblings. I loved the backdrop. It felt very sun-soaked and indulgent.

World famous artist Vic has recently told his four children that he will be getting married again, to a fellow artist decades his junior. He has started painting again and what he s working on is the biggest he has ever done. The Kemp siblings are shocked to find out he has died only weeks after the announcement. Thus begins a tumultuous journey through the web of lies and secrets surrounding the family and their father’s new love.

The ways in which his death and the relationship he was in fracture parts of this family , but also bring them together. I found the dynamic to be really entertaining. I didn’t particularly care much for the characters, but I found the overall story to be really enjoyable.

The writing is exquisite. The character development is multilayered and intricate. So many emotions abound, for both the characters as well as the reader. The story offers several viewpoints, solutions and degrees of complexity. The relationship among the siblings and their relationship with their father, is deep seated. I found this book to be extraordinarily good and evoked in me, many heart felt feelings. Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for granting me this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own. #TheHomemadeGod, # RandomHouse Publishing.

The Homemade God was an emotional and familial story that dove into the inner workings of families and their short comings. I think it depicted a story in the true way members experienced it.

The story itself may be ordinary and commonplace but that is both the beauty and the power that it holds. While each day is a unique set of occurrences they all come together to form the exact reality that this family lives.

While this was not necessarily a plot twist heavy shocking mystery novel it revealed mystery in a more muted and common experience. It allowed the reader to truly experience the life of the characters and the family because it so accurately depicted each individual's thoughts and emotions while switching back to the greater whole every once in a while. I enjoyed getting to see little bits of each of the siblings lives through the lens of their experience with their father.

This was a fun summer inspired novel that felt like you jumped into the inner workings of this dynamic family. It felt like a summer vacation but stayed very realistic and simplistic and avoided over complicating things to merely add to the plot.

Thank you so much to Random House Publishing Group - Random House | The Dial Press for providing me with this advanced copy, I truly enjoyed this read.