The Radleys

The Radleys

Matt Haig

Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

Just about everyone knows a family like the Radleys. Many of us grew up next door to one. They are a modern family, averagely content, averagely dysfunctional, living in a staid and quiet suburban English town. Peter is an overworked doctor whose wife, Helen, has become increasingly remote and uncommunicative. Rowan, their teenage son, is being bullied at school, and their anemic daughter, Clara, has recently become a vegan. They are typical, that is, save for one devastating exception: Peter and Helen are vampires and have—for seventeen years—been abstaining by choice from a life of chasing blood in the hope that their children could live normal lives. One night, Clara finds herself driven to commit a shocking—and disturbingly satisfying—act of violence, and her parents are forced to explain their history of shadows and lies. A police investigation is launched that uncovers a richness of vampire history heretofore unknown to the general public. And when the malevolent and alluring Uncle Will, a practicing vampire, arrives to throw the police off Clara’s trail, he winds up throwing the whole house into temptation and turmoil and unleashing a host of dark secrets that threaten the Radleys’ marriage. The Radleys is a moving, thrilling, and radiant domestic novel that explores with daring the lengths a parent will go to protect a child, what it costs you to deny your identity, the undeniable appeal of sin, and the everlasting, iridescent bonds of family love. Read it and ask what we grow into when we grow up, and what we gain—and lose—when we deny our appetites.


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    I've read three other Matt Haig books and enjoyed them a lot but this one was kinda disappointing. Way too mundane for a vampire book with all the wrong cliches. The cheating wife, the weird uncle, the snotty loser son who gets bullied but then suddenly becomes cool and gets with the girl he was unhealthily obsessed with, the daughter with an eating disorder, the conveniently placed background character neighbors with their own squabbles. It's like a bad telenovela but with a little bit of blood drinking. I feel like it would have been fine if the book was a comedy but it's not even funny enough to make up for the dry plot. The "villain" has questionable morals but even his vengeance/jealousy shtick doesn't make any sense nor is it relatable. Two stars for some of the cool vampire lore.

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