Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings

It's Friday . . . time to share book excerpts with:

• Book Beginnings on Fridays hosted by Rose City Reader, where bloggers share the first sentence or more of a current read, as well as initial thoughts about the sentence(s), impressions of the book, or anything else that the opening inspires.  
• The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice, where you grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an ebook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.

Today I'm featuring You Were Made For This by Michelle Sacks.  The excerpts shared are from the hardcover version I borrowed from the library.

Beginning:  Merry

If you saw us you'd probably hate us.  We look like the cast of an insurance commercial: shiny, happy us.  The perfect little family, living the perfect little life.

Wasn't that another perfect day? is what we always say at the end of days like these. A confirmation.  A promise.  A warding-off of any days that might be anything less. But most are perfect here in Sweden, many more than I can count.

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Page 56: "I went outside.  The calls with my mother usually end like this.  Me in a rage."

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My thoughts:  What seems perfect on the outside is anything but.  Merry and Sam, the husband and wife in the story, are hiding disturbing secrets from each other and are less than honest with themselves.  Reading this story so far is like seeing a train wreck that you can't drag your attention away from.  

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From Goodreads:  A gripping page-turner for fans of THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW and THE PERFECT NANNY, Michelle Sacks's You Were Made For This provocatively explores the darkest sides of marriage, motherhood, and friendship.

Doting wife, devoted husband, cherished child. Merry, Sam, and Conor are the perfect family in the perfect place. Merry adores the domestic life: baking, gardening, caring for her infant son. Sam, formerly an academic, is pursuing a new career as a filmmaker. Sometimes they can hardly believe how lucky they are. What perfect new lives they've built.

When Merry's childhood friend Frank visits their Swedish paradise, she immediately becomes part of the family. She bonds with Conor. And with Sam. She befriends the neighbors, and even finds herself embracing the domesticity she's always seemed to scorn.

All their lives, Frank and Merry have been more like sisters than best friends. And that's why Frank soon sees the things others might miss. Treacherous things, which are almost impossible to believe when looking at this perfect family. But Frank, of all people, knows that the truth is rarely what you want the world to see. 

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This Friday Focus post was originally written and/or compiled and published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com.  It cannot be republished without attribution. 
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