In this compelling and poignant debut novel, a woman skilled at caring for animals must learn to mend the broken relationships in her family.…
Since her teens, Geneva has kept her self-destructive mother at arm’s length. Now, with two slippery teenagers of her own at home, the last thing she wants is to add Helen to the mix. But Geneva’s husband convinces her that letting Helen live with them could be her golden chance to repair their relationship.
Geneva isn’t expecting her mother to change anytime soon, but she may finally get answers to the questions she’s been asking for so long. As the truth about her family unfolds, however, Geneva may find secrets too painful to bear and too terrible to forgive.
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This was a great read different but realistic and interesting. Really liked it
Told in third-person from the viewpoint of three characters, this multi-generational story will captivate readers of all ages, but especially those tasked with caring for a parent while still raising children at home. Each chapter is dedicated to one woman from each generation giving readers insight into each character’s backstory, fears, and motivations as the story unfolds.
Helen, Geneva’s alcoholic mother, is a difficult woman with an interesting and tragic marriage to a man named Eustace. It’s Helen’s vodka-fueled car accident that opens the novel and incites the action as main character, Geneva, takes Helen into her care as Helen recovers. Ella, Geneva’s 16-year-old daughter, plays a minor role to Helen and Geneva’s story until a turn of events propels all the characters in the novel into unchartered waters.
A vast, powerful story with characters who are both tragic and flawed but who find their own personal resolutions in the aftermath of devastating events. Pay close attention to the dogs in the story. The author is well-versed in animal behavior (take a peek at her bio) and writes wonderful, fully drawn dogs that hold clues to the story and characters worth discovering.
I liked this book.
Great book about convoluted family relationships.
There a family mystery that Geneva does not understand. Thing go from bad to worse once her mother has an accident and need to recuperate. Geneva is relaxant to do so. Her husband convenience her to bring her mother in to stay.
Geneva start to investigate about the relationship between her older sister Paris and their mother. Geneva mother Helen has dealt with since her eldest daughter turned sixteen. There mother had to do something about it to stop what was going on. That thing see had to do is something Paris and her mother could not forgive her for it.
Ella and Charlies get themselves in trouble as well. Things gets worse after their grandmother comes to stay for a little while. Things start to startle Geneva while her mother starts to put some things together. It a fun read but not for children. It deals with teenage things and adult things.
I enjoyed this book about a very broken family but with some good and very loving relationships between some of the siblings. The end was disappointing but very realistic and probably what would have happened in real life.
The story is about a family and secrets that happened within. I didn’t care for the characters at first, but when the story came together at the end, I couldn’t put it down. It was helpful that I was forewarned in another review that it’s not a cute doggie book. I enjoyed the read.
A great read. Dogs play a minor role in the story, but the consequences of human actions is a wake-up call to all. There are subtle and not so subtle undertones to this story that should give the reader some thoughtful reflection.
Geneva Novak is a veterinarian who prefers understands animals better than she understands her mother’s self-destructive ways. But when her mother is injured in an accident, Geneva has to bend a little or her entire family might break. Letting her mother move in with her family, which includes two teenagers, isn’t something Geneva is keen on doing, but it may be the catalyst for healing the wounds of the past and repairing her fractured relationship with her mother.
Told from the perspective of three generations of women– Geneva, her mother and her teenage daughter– House Broken is a deeply emotional and heart wrenching novel and a stunning debut. Sonja Yoerg has a gift for creating characters and showing the complexities of human nature. Definitely a women’s fiction author to watch!
It was a real life book. Wish I could write my own ending to some of my chapters!
A complex story, “House Broken” isn’t one of those books that compels the reader to fudge curfew and read long into the night. All the right threads are there — but dramatic pacing is absent and the story takes much too much time to resolve. And yet, ‘resolve’ is hardly the right word because, just like real life, we aren’t given an encompassing, heartwarming resolution to life’s troubles and because of that, kudos to the author for keeping it real.
There are characters and events around them who do nothing to move the story forward and should have been edited. I’m sure the author thought she was creating a sense of family so different from the one in the reader’s focus, but the effort is gratuitous and would have best been cut.
But for all of my criticism, the author has a superb handle on teenagers and most especially, that divisive nature between brother and sister high schoolers. I nearly wept for the daughter, Ella, but her pain is so universal, it might have been myself for whom I wanted to weep.
Give “House Broken” a whirl — it may not land on the shelf of your all time favorite books, but it is worth a read.
This book was not about dogs or a veterinarian. It was about a dysfunctional family. Very disappointed!
A good read
The second book I’ve read from this author, and I would recommend this one.
I read part of this book, but didn’t finish it. Can only give it 3 stars.
Interesting that the cover features a dog and the title suggests the importance of a dog, but dogs were very minor to the story. Almost as if added in at the last minute.
The book was good for a quick read, nothing more.
I think I expected it to be more of an animal themed book. The only thing animal related is that the main character is a vet and that is only brought up a minimal amount of times. The story was very disjointed and things were just left hanging. Wasn’t terrible but I wouldn’t recommend it.
This book had interesting characters and was not a predictable story. Good story for the price.
Page Turner for sure! A book I am glad to own and read over and over! Loved it!
I liked the twists & turns. Real life can be ugly & messy at times.