A Place For Us - Liza Gyllenhaal

Ali Mark
Feb 4, 2016
3 min read

Published in March 2013.

Pages: 312.

Number of books by author: 6 Novels.

Genre: Fiction.

When Phoebe is asked to stay late to watch Tilly until her (secret) true love, Liam, gets home from boarding school, will trouble arise when drugs and alcohol come into the mix? Will an assumed situation turn into a series of lies - and will those lies catch up to everyone involved - or will someone get away with a crime?

You may like this book if you like the following sub-genres:

Family life
Sexual/Domestic Assault
Drug & Alcohol Abuse
Crime/Legal

Goodreads users gave this book a 3.61. I think it was more deserving of a 3.50.

I wasn't overly impressed with this novel, but I was pleased with it. I thought the story line was unexpected based off the back of the cover. I certainly didn't anticipate the potential for a sexual assault to take place until it came time for it to take place.

The writing style, the vocabulary was more than general. Nothing was too difficult to capture or comprehend; but it's easy writing style felt natural to the author. I really felt as if it was in a conversational format, which paired nicely with the change between character perspectives (although, at times, it felt as though there were time differences

in the story that didn't add up). I don't normally enjoy reading books where the character perspective changes every chapter, but this was written in a way that it felt natural and it was easy to follow and understand each character's perspective.

The changing perspectives were such a benefit to the character growth in this book. It's important that a book has a purpose - and the purpose here wasn't that sexual and domestic violence existed; it wasn't that there was a drug and alcohol problem. The purpose of this book was the growth in each character. While not a requirement for a book to be successful, it can be required in a book such as this one. No one wants to read a sob story without some kind of release. Other than maybe some history to Liam's character, I thought each character was really well defined. I felt almost as if I wanted a little bit more from Phoebe, Liam, Brook, and Michael, and a little less from characters such as Troy. I just felt as though his perspective wasn't really necessary. (Although, I think it goes to show that the characters truly did care what others thought about them despite -or because of- their wealth, which was such a weighted part of the story.)

Again, the book wasn't anything extraordinary. It wasn't moving; it wasn't tragic. But it felt realistic. If you're in this situation - experiencing a sexual assault, you know that it's numbing, it's embarrassing , it's hard to combat what people assume happened when you're still trying to process it. And I think Gyllenhaal did such an amazing job of exploring this emotional and mental process. It was done tactfully, tastefully, and more importantly, accurately. I think if I were speaking with a victim of a very recent assault, I might recommend this book as a way to work through those initial feelings.

I loved that we got to see this happen from the idea of a falsely accused. Not many books write about a sexual assault from this perspective (especially since the author is a female). No one who's been assaulted wants to hear about false-rape claims. No one wants it to be a wrongly accused situation. Not only is it something that happens, but it's something that isn't talked about because everyone involved in falsely accusing someone of something as severe as a sexual assault, but no one expects to understand the process of how it can destroy a family - especially in a small city.