Tigers in Red Weather

Author: Liza Klaussman

Goodreads Rating: 3.62

My Rating: 4 Stars

Pages: 368

Reviewed by: Nicole

I got this book both from Netgalley and at BEA. I got this when I went to BEA because I sort of hate how Netgalley comes with a time restriction on when you need to read the book by. Regardless of how I got the book though, it was a fabulous read.

Goodreads Synopses:

Nick and her cousin, Helena, have grown up sharing sultry summer heat, sunbleached boat docks, and midnight gin parties on Martha's Vineyard in a glorious old family estate known as Tiger House. In the days following the end of the Second World War, the world seems to offer itself up, and the two women are on the cusp of their 'real lives': Helena is off to Hollywood and a new marriage, while Nick is heading for a reunion with her own young husband, Hughes, about to return from the war.

Soon the gilt begins to crack. Helena's husband is not the man he seemed to be, and Hughes has returned from the war distant, his inner light curtained over. On the brink of the 1960s, back at Tiger House, Nick and Helena--with their children, Daisy and Ed--try to recapture that sense of possibility. But when Daisy and Ed discover the victim of a brutal murder, the intrusion of violence causes everything to unravel. The members of the family spin out of their prescribed orbits, secrets come to light, and nothing about their lives will ever be the same.

Brilliantly told from five points of view, with a magical elegance and suspenseful dark longing, Tigers in Red Weather is an unforgettable debut novel from a writer of extraordinary insight and accomplishment.

I have a few mixed feelings about this book, and most of them stem from the fact that the book was so well written and that the plot was so well developed that it was hard to believe that I felt such strong contempt for all of the characters. I hated all but one, and that one was the naive twelve year old girl. It almost felt tragic.

One of the reasons that I stuck with a higher rating on this book was because of how well written it was. There was such an intricate plot having to deal with Ed and Daisy and their childhood as well as the post World War Two world. I have to say as far as their parents go, I did not care much for Nick and Helena. Nick was so selfish and Helena was just annoying.

What I also loved about this book was that it split the story into 5 different sections, and each of those sections is told from a different point of view. The book started with Nick's story and then it worked through to Daisy, Helena, Hughes, and then to Ed. Each had a different piece to the puzzle of the plot which was great!

The murder does play some role in the book, but really not all that much because so much of the drama come to fruition after the murder. It seemed to only have to do with Daisy's chapters, and even then it wasn't that crucial to the story.

One of the reasons that I didn't like the characters was because they had no redeeming qualities, most of them were drunks that were just selfish about what they did. I can understand one character being that irritating, but when it was almost everyone, that was just hard to understand. Once you look past the characters, you can find a really great book. It was well written and the plot was just as intricate. Definitely one to check out for the beach.