The Precious One

October 20, 2014
Two sisters struggle to please their smart, manipulative, and narcissistic father, in bestseller de los Santos’s (Falling Together) newest family drama. For 17 years, Taisy Cleary (now 35), along with her mother and her brother, Marcus, have had minimal contact with her father, Wilson. When Wilson beckons after suffering a major heart attack, Taisy, who still yearns for his approval, requires little persuasion to come to his side. Sixteen-year-old Willow is Wilson’s other daughter (Wilson left Taisy’s family to be with Willow’s mother). Willow has been sheltered and controlled by her father her entire life—he forbade her from watching television or movies or reading books written later than the 19th century—but she’s jarred into the real world following his heart attack. To Taisy, Willow has always been the golden child—the one Wilson chose to love. To Willow, Taisy and Marcus are the seedy others, the “earlier ones.” The sisters’ shaky relationship is altered when Taisy learns of Willow’s inappropriate relationship with an older man. The slow fracturing of each sister’s perception of the other and the strong three-dimensional characters are exceptionally well crafted. And the predictability of the ending is more than made up for by the fact that de los Santos’s characters’ journeys are perfectly paced.

October 15, 2014
Eustacia "Taisy" Cleary's rich, obnoxious father abandoned the family to marry a beautiful young sculptor, and Taisy has seen him and his new wife and daughter only once in 17 years. So why does he want her to visit, make nice to her half-sister, and help him write a memoir? With a 150,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2015

De los Santos's fourth novel (after Love Walked In; Belong to Me) unfolds in two voices: Eustacia "Taisy" Cleary, 35, and Willow Cleary, 16. The two are half sisters, though they've barely met--until Taisy's estranged father invites her back into his life after a health crisis, ostensibly to have her ghostwrite his memoir. Taisy, additionally pulled to her hometown by the presence of her old high school flame, is still able to forgive her father, and mentor and protect Willow. Her half sister has previously been homeschooled and although she's intelligent and beautiful, she's also socially naive and is in over her head at the local high school. But even while being bullied by her peers and groomed by a predatory teacher, she encounters a saving grace: friendship with a handsome, popular classmate. VERDICT Despite some modern melodrama, the author writes engagingly and creates complex and lovable characters who carry the story. Readers of character-based fiction with heartwarming, hopeful endings (e.g., books by authors such as Elizabeth Berg or Ann Hood) will love this one, too. Also recommended for adult fans of John Green who enjoy preternaturally clever, sophisticated teens and witty banter between romantic leads. [See Prepub Alert, 9/22/14.]--Melanie Kindrachuk, Stratford P.L., Ont.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2014

Eustacia "Taisy" Cleary's rich, obnoxious father abandoned the family to marry a beautiful young sculptor, and Taisy has seen him and his new wife and daughter only once in 17 years. So why does he want her to visit, make nice to her half-sister, and help him write a memoir? With a 150,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 15, 2015
Half sisters who don't really know each other are brought together by their emotionally domineering father for reasons of his own.Inventor/professor/entrepreneur Wilson left his first wife and their adolescent twins, Taisy and Marcus, 17 years ago, and he hasn't seen them in 15 years, since the first birthday party for Willow, his daughter with his new, much younger wife, sculptor Caro. But when Wilson invites Taisy, now a successful ghostwriter in her 30s, to visit him after his heart surgery, she quickly agrees. As she travels, Taisy thinks about her high school boyfriend, Ben, and the way her father destroyed their relationship. What a coincidence that Ben turns up back in town, too. Realizing that her father wants her to ghostwrite his biography, Taisy decides to learn his real story. For all his genius, Wilson has warped almost all the lives he's touched. As Taisy starts her research, she also begins to re-establish a relationship with the unbelievably sensitive Ben as if neither has changed in almost two decades. Meanwhile, Willow-who considers herself Wilson's "true daughter"-is struggling. Despite appearing tall, beautiful and collected, she's intimidated by her older sister's visit. She's also judgmental, assuming Taisy did something horrific to alienate their father, who's shown his younger daughter nothing but affection. And she's having difficulty adjusting to the private high school she's begun attending while Wilson recuperates. Home-schooled by Wilson through her entire childhood, Willow has little experience of peer friendship or the outside world in general. Soon she has a dangerous crush on her English teacher, but waiting in the wings is a high school boy almost as perfect for her as Ben is for Taisy. Despite intellectual pretentions, including lots of references to Middlemarch, de los Santos (Falling Together, 2011, etc.) offers a comfort-food story in which men are either predators or perfect and women are both beautiful and brilliant.

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Starred review from February 1, 2015
Taisy Cleary has spent the majority of her adult life estranged from her father, Wilson, a difficult, demanding college professor. Now in her late thirties, Taisy is shocked when her father calls and asks her to visit. Is he trying to mend their relationship from his deathbed, or does he have ulterior motives? Despite her twin brother Marcus' misgivings, Taisy agrees to visit Wilson, his second wife, Caroline, and their only child, 16-year-old Willow. Willow doesn't know what to make of Taisy's sudden appearance, which coincides with her move from home school to high school, and she fears that Taisy will replace her in her father's eyes. Meanwhile, Taisy has fences to mend with her first love, Ben. De los Santos alternates between Taisy's and Willow's points of view, slowly revealing a variety of family secrets. Tenderhearted, brilliant Willow has her own hidden concerns as a close friendship with a teacher develops into a full-fledged romance that she is too naive to handle. Emotionally potent, painfully honest, and, at times, delightfully funny, de los Santos' (Falling Together, 2011) latest is a must for fans of intelligent, thoughtful women's fiction.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)