Book Review: THe Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeny

July 15, 2024

Maybe I wasn’t in the right headspace for this book, but I didn’t love it. I had to listen to parts of it in order to stay focused. Granted, this is not a book that I am usually interested in, but for whatever reason, I had been really drawn to it.

This book follows ( mostly ) a set of siblings Leo, Jack, Beatrice and Melody Plumb. They are all planning on the relief of the financial trust, they call The Nest, for different reasons. They are all supposed to get their share on Melody’s 40th birthday, but just before her birthday, Leo gets in an accident, and their cold and harsh mother decides to drain quite a bit of the funds to help Leo out. While this initially makes her look like the hero, once it comes to light that it was not her money that she was helping Leo with, but that she was stealing from him and his siblings, chaos ensues.

Things I didn’t like about this book: the timelines were unclear in bits and pieces. I was often confused as to when we were supposed to be. The story is from so many points of view that I feel like you get a really good grasp as to what is going on, but it makes it very confusing when we are bouncing around timelines and points of view without any indication other than reading through the story and using context clues.

Things I liked about this book: it was pretty fast paced and engaging. There was a lot going on and a lot of characters juicy inner lives to unpack. I feel like a lot of the characters are relatable in a lot of ways, and I felt connected to each of them at different points in the story. The ending did wrap things up nicely, but it didn’t happen in a way that felt unnatural.

Overall, I don’t think I would suggest this book, unless you want to read a bunch of character studies just mushed together into one book.