Author: Michelle Huneven
Year published: 2025
Category: Adult fiction
Pages: 288 pages
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Location: (my 2025 Google Reading map): USA (CA) and Saudi Arabia
Summary: When Sally Samuelson was eight years old, her golden boy brother Ellis went missing the summer he graduated high school. Ellis finally turned up at the bucolic Bug Hollow, a last gasp of the beautiful Northern California counterculture in the seventies. He had found joy in the communal life there, but died in a freak accident weeks later.
From that point, the world of the Samuelsons never spins on the same axis, especially after Julia, Ellis’s girlfriend from Bug Hollow, shows up pregnant on their doorstep. Each Samuelson has sought their own solace: Sybil Samuelson pours herself into teaching and numbing her pain after the loss of her beloved son; her husband, Phil, had found respite in a love that developed while he was working as an engineer in Saudi Arabia; Katie, the high achieving middle Samuelson, comes home to try and make peace with her mother after a cancer diagnosis. And Sally has become the de facto caretaker to Eva, the child Ellis never knew.
Review: This got a five-star review from a fellow blogger, so I was all in. I'm not going as far as 5 stars, but I really enjoyed it.
This novel is a commentary on family, both nuclear and extended, and the impact we have on each other. We can step up and be there for each other, be supportive, and make a positive impact, but we can also create havoc, concern, and frustration. Sometimes, we're all of the above.
Each section of the book covers a specific character's perspective, history, and actions, which brings everything together by the end of the book. I liked that since different people experience the same events differently, interpreting actions based on their own background and brining their own attitude and personality to the experience.
If you like family stories that are character and plot-driven, you'd probably like Bug Hollow. It is well written and a well-told story.
Challenges for which this counts:
- 20 Books of Summer
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