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Geri L's avatar

I’ve was on the waiting list at the local library for 6 weeks for Hidden Valley Road. I am halfway through this book and can’t believe I’m still reading. I couldn’t wait to read it but it reads like a textbook to me. There is no skilled language in the writing. My feelings for the parents went from feeling for them to not understanding them to just not giving a care for these people. More harsh than I need to be, but there you have it.

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Amy Johns's avatar

I read Hidden Valley Road, and was kind of horrified— by the parents’ callousness, perhaps, or self-absorption? But my biggest take away was the idea that, regarding mental illness, there can be a predisposition that is never manifested or “triggered” or the opposite— but either way it is quite an enigma. I felt perhaps most sympathetic for those poor daughters that were/are the victims of systematic physical and verbal abuse by their own brothers. It got to me, that book.

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