The Party

My recent book club pick was a drama-filled novel full of questionable actions and unreliable narrators: The Party. 

The story is told by alternating between four characters.  Hannah is excited for her sixteenth birthday party and her leap into the popular crowd.  Her four friends show up, her mother lays down the rules, but the night doesn’t go as planned.  Hannah wakes her parents up in the middle of the night covered in blood, and one of her friends ends up in the hospital. This throws the parents into a tizzy of who to blame, and a lawsuit ensues.  We are thrown into a whirlwind of lies, coverups, and bullying, both with the teens and the parents.

This book took me awhile to read, which is odd.  The story was propelled forward at a good pace, but the bickering and lying just made me cringe. I guess I look at Hannah’s parents, whose marriage was perfect from the outside but rotting from the inside, and think of how sad it is to not trust and respect your counterpart.  None of the three adult narrators act like adults.  Hannah’s father is in trouble for using LSD and has a flirtation with one of Hannah’s friends.  Hannah’s mother is so focused on having the perfect family from the outside that she can’t tell that her relationship with her daughter is flawed (oh, and she’s also having a work flirtation).  The mother who is suing them is so angry she’s tossing aside her maimed daughter’s wishes and is vindictively suing Hannah’s family.  The most mature character is Hannah, and she’s the sixteen year old!  

I also saw the teen bullying situation from a different light.  Interacting with teens on a daily basis, I know how close to home this hits.  Kids have their phones literally attached to their hands all day.  They can easily communicate with each other in a positive and a negative way, and most do not understand the implications of saying or posting inappropriate things.  I guess this book was too real for me?  Too drama filled?  I don’t know what exactly, but something rubbed me wrong.

If you love binge watching Lifetime movies, this book could be a winner for you, but in my mind it felt a little over the top.