A Nearly Normal Family

By M. T. Edvardsson & Rachel Willson-Broyles

A Nearly Normal Family - M. T. Edvardsson & Rachel Willson-Broyles
  • Release Date: 2019-06-25
  • Genre: Mysteries & Thrillers
Score: 4
4
From 385 Ratings

Description

Now a Netflix Limited Series

"...A compulsively readable tour de force." —The Wall Street Journal


New York Times Book Review
recommends M.T. Edvardsson’s A Nearly Normal Family and lauds it as a “page-turner” that forces the reader to confront “the compromises we make with ourselves to be the people we believe our beloveds expect.” (NYTimes Book Review Summer Reading Issue)


M.T. Edvardsson’s A Nearly Normal Family is a gripping legal thriller that forces the reader to consider: How far would you go to protect the ones you love? In this twisted narrative of love and murder, a horrific crime makes a seemingly normal family question everything they thought they knew about their life—and one another.

Eighteen-year-old Stella Sandell stands accused of the brutal murder of a man almost fifteen years her senior. She is an ordinary teenager from an upstanding local family. What reason could she have to know a shady businessman, let alone to kill him?

Stella’s father, a pastor, and mother, a criminal defense attorney, find their moral compasses tested as they defend their daughter, while struggling to understand why she is a suspect. Told in an unusual three-part structure, A Nearly Normal Family asks the questions: How well do you know your own children? How far would you go to protect them?

Reviews

  • Repetitive, unbelievable in a most immature way

    1
    By pinqkat
    I can’t even think of finishing this, it’s mind numbingly simple immature and characters are embarrassingly shallow.
  • Paid by the word?

    2
    By rainbowcat5
    The descriptions go on forever and ever. This would have been a great short story but as a novel it’s awful. I skipped page after page of descriptions and still understood the very simple plot.
  • A remarkable book of 2 best friends who find themselves in harrowing circumstances

    4
    By kaykaybean13
    The loyalty and bond between Amina and Stella, two girls who were Olaf opposites yet shared a bond that is rare, true and love as family members. As Stella, the more adventurous and non conformist of the two often struggles with authority, being commanded and dictated to following rules, Amina is the good girl, who meets every goal she’s set for herself and future and can effortlessly speak to her best friend to reel her back from thrill seeking, destructive and not always decisions that will help her when she meets a very older man. Amina met him first, however he begins to spin his last relationship with his ex as her stalking tormenting and filing false police reports about his physical mental sexual and emotional abuse. His Mon is well known in the legal system and he is soon let go for lack of enough evidence. When this woman, Linda his ex tries to warn Stella, she feels a bit Of doubt, sickening feelings regarding her but because he lays on his feelings for her so thick, he’s taken her on planes, limos and used his wealth to very much impress her. Linda the ex keeps pleasing for Stella to get out. Giving her horrible graphic examples of what he’s going to slowly surely start to do to her and when little and then major flags begin to catch her attention she wants out. He lures has bf who is. A virgin to his appt to surprise Stella for her birthday and ends up raping her. Stella believes it because while she is waiting for him to come home, and the fact Amina isn answering. Her cell she KNOWS something is terribly wrong. She soon sees Amina running from him, she’d sprayed him already with pepper and while screaming for her bf Stella to run, Stella sees the knife- as Amina pushes it into his stomach and then another on. It is then Stella takes the knife she also gives him 2 good stab wound they leave him to bleed out. The saga that plays out while Stella is remanded, the rest of the tragic and devastating abuse and manipulation these girls were enduring comes out in court!
  • Brings out so many emotions

    5
    By Lisa Bateman
    Wow, this was the most suspenseful legal thriller I’ve ever read! Talk about a rollercoaster ride! I think this was one of the easiest books to get hooked on from the very first paragraph. My daughter is starting law school in the fall. I’m going to make her read it. It’s so suspenseful and psychologically thrilling too. The family is easy to fall in love with and relate to, even with them being dysfunctional. The mother is a lawyer. Of course, she would want to help her daughter Stella. She also knows the ins and outs of the legal system and how things aren’t looking so good for her daughter. I was a little upset with the parents for letting the daughter be out all hours of the night at her age. But I got the impression with the story that it’s in another country with a different culture than the US. The I noticed the author is from Sweden. I love reading books set in other countries. This is great. We get a sense of the different rules and laws in that country in regards to our own. Anyway, a Murder takes place where Stella has mounting evidence against her and no alibi. She has a great best friend who will go the extra mile for her. The mother is honest and always wants to do the right thing. Same with the Dad. But as we read, we find out there are secrets in the lives of the parents and also the friend. How far would your friend or parents go far you? What are they willing to sacrifice and give up? You will be shocked at the outcome to this. I think I’ll get the audiobook next because I know this will be one to listen to and read again.