Audiobook narrated by Dianne Lake herself. Fascinating look inside the Manson Family given by the youngest member. Star deducted for the long beginning—she focuses on her parents for a good while, and her early relationship with them, before ever starting to talk about her meeting up with the Family. I understand that her own family’s treatment of her, introducing her to drugs and making her unwelcome at several junctures, set her up to need Charlie Manson, but this first section was so long that I actually wandered away from this audiobook for a while. (Part of the problem, admittedly, was that I was disgusted with her parents’ treatment of her, and didn’t want to hear any more about it in detail.)

The character actor Kathleen Wilhoite’s narration was exquisite, and truly made the different layers of this complicated (and morally ambiguous) story come alive. As of now she has only narrated Senple’s two novels; she must narrate more audiobooks.

This novel is not what it appears to be: it is not a standard mystery or juicy suburban thriller. If you are looking for a mainstream Ruth Ware/Liane Moriarty/etc., this novel is probably frustrate you.
This is a novel about secrets and choices and keeping your mouth shut when you should speak, and being passive aggressive when you should be assertive, and doing these things over and over until
It is too late and you can’t take them back and violence occurs. The main characters both do this, and one of them has done this before as well, in their past—keeping silent and choosing the passive aggressive route of the silent treatment.
The intertwined milieu of therapy greatly interested me, both as a (retired—I am disabled) therapist, and as a therapy client. The author gets technical about therapeutical theories—Jung, Adler, for example—and in doing so really enhances the novel.