Review: Gripping and emotional.  Sad and hopeful.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 07 15, 2013
Wow!  I couldn't believe how spot on this book was at the beginning.  Within five pages, I was crying because it voiced so many unspoken nuances of being a stay at home mom.Amber and Tony have been married for 10+ years, with three kids.  The story opens with the whole family in Jamaica on the way home from their first vacation since their third child was born (he's now six).  Amber is so downtrodden by the disappointment of how much harder life is on vacation when you're mom and you have three kids.  She's lonely and feels unseen.  I have to be honest that some of my tears were because of the fears I have that even as my kids get older, this will be the way life plays out.As the story continues, we see all of the pain that Amber's been carrying.  She feels completely isolated and wishes for something that's just hers.  But even having the chance to stay in Jamaica for a few days on her own, she feels bereft.  It's been so long since she's wanted anything that she doesn't even have any conscious desires.  And everything that used to be what she wanted or what would have made her happy, does not feel like anything to her.  Tony's been working non-stop for a long time and knows there's a problem but has no idea how to get out of the endless loop they're stuck in.  When he heads back to Jamaica to try and save their marriage, the two of them pretend to be strangers and Amber's able to begin revealing why she's been depressed.Within the first couple pages of reading, I had really high hopes for how this book would end.  Like maybe it would give this magic solution of how to get through these feelings.  I finished the book feeling hopeful and happy with the way it ended, but felt like it left out some of the serious concerns.  Yes, hope-found can be life giving when you've lost sight of why you're with someone.  But even hopes and dreams and "someday things will be better" can only take you so far when life has been dragging you down for so long.  It really felt like all of the characters love each other, but they can't really figure out how to make boundaries.I felt good at the end, because Amber and Tony decided to look forward to the future and could see that they'd be together and work out what was wrong.  But it didn't feel like them as a family were getting the help they needed.  Maybe some of it is my own pet peeves.  I'm glad that Amber felt hopeful again but from my own experiences, not feeling for a long time takes a really long time to unlearn.  Maybe in one to five years she'll have realized some of her dreams and be feeling good, but for right now, today, it's back to the daily grind that's weighing her down.The kids were totally, understandably freaking out about their mom being gone for the first time, but so much of their words and interactions were over the top nasty feeling to me.  And the adults said and did nothing about it.  In fact, Amber wanted to do something but was so burned out that she stayed in Jamaica so Dad and Grandma gave the kids whatever they wanted because it just wasn't worth the fight.At the very beginning, Amber thinks that she's correcting the boys so they won't grow up to be monsters, but as soon as she's not actively in control, everyone steps right on her rules to do whatever they want with the kids.  This is honestly one of my biggest fears with raising my own kids - that no matter what I do, it's not going to matter and they'll be little monsters like this.  I wish this could have been dealt with a little more in the book - showing Amber standing up to Tony or her mom to get them to treat her rules as important. or how they helped the kids figure out how to treat their mom like a person too  If she's getting better from being numb, I would have expected her fight to come back too - to stick up for herself with her family and kids.I give this book 4 stars for it's realism but it's definitely not a beach read and if I were close friends with Amber and Tony, I'd say that I don't believe their "happily-ever-after" will stick without a lot of work.  This book has stuck with me long after I read it and I hope there will be more books in the future that are able to voice this part of life and continue to explore how women can be whole no matter what their life choices are.