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| 📕10-word summary: Family faces hard truths in wake of businessman patriarch’s death. 🖌6-word review: Good story. Good pacing. Hopeful ending. |
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| 💭Compelling quote: “Casual dress is a privilege for those given the benefit of the doubt. It is for people who will be accepted without question, and that’s not you.” | |||||||||
| 🎓Some new-to-me words: senescence, bicker, boater hat, quiddities, bouclé, B-roll, kente, diapason, rubicund, inosculated | |||||||||
| Description:* On their Martha’s Vineyard estate, the Carter family prepares to celebrate. But when the billionaire patriarch dies right before his 70th birthday, the media is quick to question the future of the multi-industry conglomerate that makes the Carters living legends. Amid the succession crisis, his daughter, Kennedy, is questioning her father’s past. Kennedy is an aspiring filmmaker, and the documentary she’d planned to present at her father’s party begins an inquest into the life of a man she never really knew. As a twisted history emerges, the fault lines in the family grow. Torn between morality and the promise of maintaining wealth, Kennedy must decide what’s most important—the Carter legacy or exposing the shocking truth of how it was built.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||||||||
| Thoughts: I liked how each chapter was from one character’s perspective, and essentially rotated through the members of the family at the center of this story. A scene about “a request form to ensure the chef and housekeeping staff were aware of everything from who liked to sleep with socks on, to who liked their bacon extra crispy,” reminded me of a spreadsheet that my work team created once for an off-site retreat that involved several nights during which some of us would have to share a hotel room: “We’ve started a spreadsheet to note preferences such as “needs white noise,” “likes it cold,” “snorer,” “not a morning person,” etc. Well, it quickly devolved with added columns, such as: “potty-trained,” “litterbox-trained,” “nude sleeper,” “never-nude sleeper,” “needs arm rub to fall asleep,” “needs bedtime story + song,” “needs bedtime story only,” “AM radio,” and “cuddler.” And the memory made me chuckle. I enjoyed reading about “the Black experience” attending Princeton, and a couple of times thought of a book I read last year, The Last Negroes at Harvard,” to which there was an allusion in this book, in fact. There are some good thoughts in this story about capitalism vs. humanitarianism. | |||||||||
See the rest of the books I’ve read in 2025 and previous years: 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019.