REVIEW: "Not My Boy" by Kelly Simmons
There is something special — something exclusive and cozy — about being a family of two.
Though now, as a married mother of two boys, I enjoy the relatively unrelenting chaos of a large(r) family, as a child I flourished as a member of a close-knit duo.
It was me and my single mother.
Us against the world.
At the time, it didn’t dawn on me to want anything else. Never having known a different life, it never occurred to me to be envious of my friends who had siblings...and fathers. But now, having transitioned from my passive role as a daughter to my dominant role as a mother, I wonder what it was like for my mom.
The pressure, I imagine, must have been intense. Not only was I all she had, but also she alone was responsible for my health and happiness.
It is probably because I now realize that the joys of parenthood come along with equal parts of worry that I found myself feeling for Hannah, the newly divorced mother-of-one at the center of this novel.
Still adjusting to her new normal, Hannah is actively taking strides to redefine her life. And the first step in this process appears to be moving.
To a new house.
To a new community.
To a place where she can redefine her life.
While her divorce might have been the most obvious catalyst for this relocation, the dissolution of her marriage wasn’t the only thing that made this move necessary. Another factor contributing to the move was the need to give her son, Miles, a truly fresh start.
Though Hannah is reluctant to admit it, even to herself, her son has a history of worrying behavior that suggests that he may be harboring some deep-seated issues.
Fortuitously, Just as Hannah seeks to relocate, her ideal house becomes available. Thanks to this accident of real estate, Hannah and her son’s new home will be a cozy cottage, snuggled in their perfect neighborhood, resting right next to her sister, Hillary’s, more stately house.
This idyllic neighborhood, filled with polite and proper people, will be the perfect place for Hannah and her son to start fresh. Or so she hopes. But this little family’s period of novelty and anonymity proves to be short-lived when, almost immediately following their introduction to the neighborhood, a little girl goes missing.
As the police investigation begins, no one in the neighborhood is beyond reproach. But Hannah knows that the heaviest weight of suspicion rests on the newest arrivals: Her and her son. And why wouldn’t it? After all, when they came, tragedy soon followed.
The fact that they are already natural suspects in this horrible crime makes hiding the truth about Miles’ past even more essential. If the members of her new community knew about her son’s peculiarities, their suspicion would be even more finely tuned on him. She knows this for a fact because, as much as she doesn’t want to admit it, given the truth of her son’s past, even Hannah can't honestly say that she doesn't suspect him.
Author Kelly Simmons hit the sweet spot with this novel, penning a tale that is compulsively unputdownable using lyrical — and even, at times, moving — prose.
Though the primary conflict in this novel obviously stemmed from the disappearance of a young, vulnerable girl, throughout the entire novel our protagonist, Hannah, was almost suffocating under layers of tension that proved paralyzing. This, along with her close relationship with her troubled son, made Hannah a tremendously sympathetic character.
As I devoured this novel, the only thing that I was left wanting were some additional mentions of some of the secondary characters.
I’m not bring this point up because I didn’t feel like these characters weren’t developed — in truth, most were, or at least as much as they needed to be to service the plot. My desire for the author to mention some of these secondary characters once or twice more is purely practical. Because there were scant mentions of basically everyone outside of Hannah’s family, there were times when a secondary character would reappear after a long absence and I would truly have trouble remembering who they were and what role they played in our protagonist’s experience.
This, obviously, is the most minute of issues and shouldn’t give anyone considering picking up this title pause.
In fact, if you have any inclination at all to read this book I would give you one simple piece of advice: do it.
If you do, you will find that this novel is so much more than you would typically expect a thriller to be. Ultimately — as the title kind of alludes to — it is a pretty fucking moving exploration of parenthood which anyone, parent or otherwise, will likely be able to draw something from.
Parenthood is, honestly, one of those things that I don’t think you can really understand until you experience it.
You can read all the books and you can take all the classes and you can curate a collection of tips, carefully categorizing them for future accessibility on Pinterest boards, but until you’ve felt the burden of loving and protecting a tiny human that you played a part in creating, you don’t really know what it will be like.
And it doesn’t get easier as they get older
As my eldest son rapidly approaches his teenage years — he’s 11 now, 12 in June — I’m starting to experience the struggles associated with letting him go. I’m feeling the emotional dissonance that comes with lengthening the leash in preparation for cutting the tether all together.
Perhaps this book comes at a good time for me, because it was this specific struggle of parenthood that the novel captured with surprising elegance. Under the guise of a thriller, Simmons masterfully captured this conundrum — the difficulty of pushing aside the desire to protect your children so you can allow them to take the risks and, ultimately, make the mistakes from which you know they will learn.
It is probably because I didn't expect such a powerful and beautiful exploration of what it means to be a family — such an amazing study of the fortitude required to be a parent — that I found it so moving.
An incredibly pleasant surprise that I will not soon forget, this must-read thriller earns 5 out of 5 cocktails.
What type of family did you grow up in? What type of family do you have now? And, perhaps most importantly, do you wish either family — your former or your current — were any different? Tell me about it in the comments, below.
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*I was provided a gifted copy of this title by the publisher*
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