Kevin Wilson (2022)
(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)
This book was a Pandemic Book Club selection. Or an Alternate. I listened to it before the final selection was made. I was the one picking the books this month.
I enjoyed this book and plan on reading it whenever it becomes available at the library, whether or not it is selected for the Book Club.
A little background: A while back, I posted an image I saw online showing postage-stamp sized covers for "the best books on Good Reads for the past 10 yeasr".
It was suggested that I select three of them for my picks for the book club. Ugh.
As it turns out, the image was bogus. It was nowhere to be found on Good Reads, nor was there any sort of page with this information. What I did find was the best books, by genre, voted on by the readers, and lists of the Top 200 books, by rating I believe, for each of those years.
Each year had 8 thumbnails in the image. As best as I could tell, four of these were fiction and four were historical fiction. Those were the only two categories. It wasn't the top book from eight different categories. Worse, sometimes the top book wasn't even one of the eight images. And still worse, three of the 80 books weren't even in the top ten of either genre or top 200 of the year.
Actually, it might've been four, but there were three books in particular that I was unable to identify. The images weren't clear enough to read a title and I couldn't find matching covers. It is possible that it was an alternate cover, which happened in at least one other case.
Getting back to my picks: I devised a scheme in a spreadsheet, using the Good Reads rating and the page count. After Copperhead, I was determined not to have anything over 500 pages, and anything over, say, 350 better by damn good AND interesting to me. Keep in mind, nothing here is genre fiction. Also of most, I checked availability at the three area libraries.
Most of the historical stuff fell into disfavor because the most popular books of the year are going to hit the same time periods. I'd sooner find another Cold Sassy Tree! And a lot of the general fiction hit a lot of the same themes. Now, some of them might've been interesting from their descriptions, and I'd read them IF one of the OTHER members of the club picked them. But they weren't going to be MY picks.
That's brings us to Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson. It was always going to be my number one pick, even as I struggled to find numbers 2 and 3.
A woman is hired to take care of a couple of twins that have a problem that they suddenly will burst into flames. Did I need more than that? I got my genre fiction. And it wasn't a horror book. It's not Firestarter, not Stephen King.
Lillian becomes the caretaker for her estranged friend Madison's two stepchildren, who spontaneously combust when agitated. It's a sticky situation. And the two friends have a strained history of their own.
We learn that Lillian who grew up poor and with a mother who didn't care about much of anything, got a scholarship to private high school. Madison is her roommate who instantly takes to Lillian because she's real, not someone pretending to be something, not another snooty rich person (like Madison herself, although she isn't snooty about it then). Rich kids can usually get away with anything. It won't matter because they all have rich parents. However, near the end of the year, drugs are found in Madison's room, and for once, the school is going to make an example out of her for all the other rich kids to see.
Madison's father doesn't want her daughter's life opportunites (not career opportunites, mind you) to be ruined, so he offers Lillian's mother $10,000 for Lillian to take the fall. Instead of being more lenient on the poor girl, the school kicks her out. She goes back to public school as a failure with a reputation, and no one expects anything to become of her, nor do the go out of their way to make her life better. She's a screwup. And the "college fund", of course, disappeared long before she got to college.
Flash foward a bunch of years, Madison is married to a Senator and living in Atlanta. She's been pen pals with Lillian the entire time. She calls Lillian with an opportunity to look after her two stepchildren whose mother passed away. There's just one little catch -- the children catch fire. Their clothes get singed but they're otherwise fine.
It takes time for the kids to trust her and start to do breathing exercises. They move into a guest house behind the Senator's mansion in Atlanta where they all start to grow on each other, except for Carl, who is an aide to the senator and her liaison.
Lillian does a bit of growing herself and loves and protects the kids. If I had a complaint about this book is that the story is too short -- I know, I can't believe I'm saying this. What I mean is that when would should be a big twist happens, the fallout isn't quite what it should be. Keep in mind, the title of the book is "Nothing to See Here" because stuff like this gets covered up in politics if you're rich, know enough people, and can exchange favors.
And yet, you'd think that the author would've turned up the temperature a little more. But I guess it had to be kept to a manageable, "cover-uppable" level.
I enjoyed this audiobook and reccommend it.
If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs. A fantastical foursome of flash fiction and short stories.
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