Jennifer Burke

I started out liking this book, but for a number of reasons, my opinion changed considerably. Sean Murtaugh, a young Irishman who has been living and working in New York, is called home when his wealthy father suddenly dies in an early morning car crash. Things go from bad to worse when the family learns that the dead man's will gives his entire estate to Andrew, the product of a one-night stand with a married woman, that no one but his best friend ever knew about. Sean's mother and sisters risk being put out of their home with nothing to live on. By shifting the narrators, however, the author allows reader also sympathizes with the other family. The husband died several years earlier, and Andrew is in desperate need of a kidney transplant, and his sister, a nurse, has devoted her life to caring for him. His mother abruptly moves the family to Ballylough, where the Murtaughs live, in hopes of pressuring them not to contest the will and to abandon their home. Members of each family are determined to fight the will.

So what went wrong? Well, first, there are too many coincidences. For example, Sean stops by a local pub and is mysteriously attracted to a young woman--who (you guessed it) turns out to be Tor, Andrew's sister-carer. When Sean's youngest sister, depressed from her father's death and all the quarreling, attempts suicide, who do you think rescues her? Right, it's Tor. And who do you think turns out to be the perfect match for Andrew's much needed transplant? (Ho-hum.) I could give many more examples, but suffice it to say that it started getting on my nerves, and that's when I began to notice irritating flaws. Like the phone call in which the person in New York says it's 8:00 p.m., and the one in Dublin says it's 4:00 in the afternoon there. Since when is New York 20 hours ahead of Dublin? Or when a character says (and I don't believe this was meant to be part of the characterization), "Don't let anyone pressurize you into donating a kidney." The predictability started to get worse--plus the injection of too many overly dramatic moments (convulsions, confessions of abusive boyfriends, guilt over a dead neighbor and more) when the going got slow. My two-star rating is probably overly generous. It was a short book that ultimately seemed very, very long.… (mais)