Three Story House: A Novel - A Heartwarming Family Saga for Book Clubs & Contemporary Fiction Lovers | Perfect for Reading Retreats & Literary Discussions

Three Story House is an interesting and well-written novel. In this book, three cousins try to fix up a house and each other. The characters here are connected with the family in Roots of the Olive Tree, and a character from that book even makes an appearance. The book is told mostly in third-person limited perspective in three sections, each one focusing on a cousin. Most of the book takes place during 2012, a little under the shadow of the Mayan apocalypse theory; this time provides a nice backdrop to the cousins' life decisions. Santo uses her settings carefully, and she makes Memphis and Massachusetts more interesting and real to me, a Westerner. It's also obvious that she did a lot of research about renovating old homes. The house sounds lovely; I wish I could just search for it and see pictures online! (Of course, the lists of actual spite houses are nearly as good.) I appreciated seeing how each cousin dealt with failure and how they supported each other, although I agree that the characters despite developing a lot, are a little flat to start with. I was genuinely surprised by a couple of the plot twists.My copy has a section at the back with a historical note on spite houses, an extended bio of the author, reading questions, and a "short beginning"--what I guess is an alternate opening--that flashes back to the beginning of Spite House. I wish there was more of an explanation of this beginning, but it has some nice background information that was not included in the novel.Content note: This book has sexual references and adult language.