Do Not Become Alarmed
Ratings12
Average rating3.1
"From a beloved, award-winning writer, the much-anticipated novel about what happens when two families go on a tropical vacation--and the children go missing. When Liv and Nora decide to take their families on a holiday cruise, everyone is thrilled. The ship's comforts and possibilities seem infinite. The children--two eleven-year-olds, an eight-year-old, and a six-year-old--love the nonstop buffet and the independence they have at the Kids' Club. But when they all go ashore in beautiful Central America, a series of minor misfortunes leads the families farther and farther from the ship's safety. One minute the children are there, and the next they're gone. What follows is a riveting, revealing story told from the perspectives of the adults and the children, as the once-happy parents--now turning on one another and blaming themselves--try to recover their children and their lives. Celebrated for her ability to write vivid, spare, moving fiction, Maile Meloy shows how quickly the life we count on can fall away, and how a crisis changes everyone's priorities. The fast-paced, gripping plot of Do Not Become Alarmed carries with it an insightful, provocative examination of privilege, race, guilt, envy, the dilemmas of modern parenthood, and the challenge of living up to our own expectations"--
"From a beloved, award-winning writer, the much-anticipated novel about what happens when two families go on a tropical vacation--and the children go missing"--
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I just...I expected more from this book. Both in depth and page count. The overarching story is grabbing, but I felt whiplashed with each plot twist. I kept wanting to dive deeper into the many + distinct characters' backstories and psyches. For all the emotional loops and leaps, I felt this book could have been and should have been at least 100 pages to flesh out the truly unique story.
READ :: if you pride yourself in unraveling a plot within the first 100 pages and are looking for a challenge.
SKIP :: If you have a cruise vacation on deck + have been repeatedly accused of being a helicopter parent.
Once again, a novel from a “best of” list. Once I realized this wasn't meant to be a fast-paced, white knuckled thriller, I enjoyed the book more. Until I came to this insight, which was about three quarters of the way through, I kept wanting the narrative to have more twists, turns, and excitement. There is drama in the story, but it's not really in the plot points, but rather within the conflict which arises internally and externally among the characters. Yet, too much of this drama felt too tidy. It's about three families, each neatly constructed with a boy and a girl. And not to give a spoiler, but even the conclusion and the long epilogue felt too tidy as well. For a novel with a truly gut-wrenching premise and at least one agonizing scene describing about the worst thing that could befall a teen-aged girl, the conclusion wrapped things up nice and cleanly. In life, things do wrap up smoothly, but often not this perfectly.
I agree with everything Rachel Hall said in her review - lots of stereotypes, no consistent tone, totally implausible. The adults were all awful, and the plot felt pretty racist at points.
