Great story and well-crafted characters make White Oaks an enjoyable read.

Aimee Trapnell reluctantly leaves her apartment on Manhattan’s Central Park West to return to her childhood home in Georgia for her father’s ninetieth birthday. Also on hand are her two brothers, wily Marsh and ne’er-do-well Trainor. With a forty-billion-dollar inheritance at stake, they’re willing to do whatever it takes to make the old man happy.

To their shock, they learn that what their father wants for his birthday is to kill someone. He doesn’t care who it is. He just wants to know what it’s like to commit murder.

Re-reading the blurb, I'm again reminded that this had the potential to be really entertaining, quirky, a bit off the wall and one that was right up my street. A couple of months down the road, all I can remember is a slight sense of disappointment.

Lots of the story has disappeared from my consciousness and I've no real desire to relive the book by flicking back through it.

Story - underwhelming. Characters - not especially interesting or likable, with the exception of Marsh who grew on me through the book. Pace - can't remember. Outcome - forgotten. Setting - Georgia mainly, I can't remember the other locations visited in the book.

Bits were entertaining. I think someone got eaten by an alligator, or maybe we were just supposed to think that? I can't recall. Money and a massive inheritance potentially is a motivating factor for some of the family. A thermonuclear weapon, in the form of a suitcase bomb is the main focus towards the latter portion of the book. It kind of starts out as one thing and morphs into something totally different.

I don't recall hating it and wanting to throw the book at the wall, but that's as positive as it gets.

3 from 5

Read - November, 2021
Published - 2020
Page count - 228
Source - purchased copy, previously Net Galley review copy which expired
Format - paperback

No, I didn't finish and don't plan to. The "ain't gonna's" are not for me. When you take a man who is worth in the billions and you add 3 very different and not nice children, it isn't logical that one would be a hick type of person, one a glamorous fashion designer with 3 beds each worth $45K and one smooth operator, it's too much.None of the characters is likable at all!. Add to that the request of the 90 year old father to find someone he can literally strangle and I just can't see the 3 of them saying, "Yes, Daddy" and then setting out to do so.

That's when I stopped. Enough for me.
Thank you NetGalley for an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Beware, if you want to see every designer name and the word “bespoke” a gazillion times, this is your book. If on the other hand Prada, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Emilio Zegna, Patek Philippe, and on and on and on is not your thing, don’t even bother opening this book.

One sentence and you need to know nothing else: “The Trapnell children were as suspicious and watchful of each other as Medicis.” To say that the descriptions of clothing, food and everything else was trite and cliche is being generous. It was all very, very, annoying. The whole storyline seems to writhe with the winner takes all and hell be damned if you aren’t the winner.

Strange, the whole running around and back was just too strange. But you can always pick up a few designers with whom me you might not be acquainted; Turnbull & Asser, Cartier, Roberto Cavalli, Tom Ford. There is a whole lot of that and not much else going on in White Oaks.

I received this book from NetGalley and Black Rose Writing in exchange for a review.

Good satire, but maybe due to bad timing, this book didn't work for me. I find I need more from my fiction than this book had to offer.

This is a well written book and the characters are very well drawn and likable. However the story itself is somewhat unbelievable but still very entertaining.

White Oaks is a humorous dark thriller. A great storyline and well developed characters. Well written and entertaining.