While reading Down by the Water, I was yet again reminded why women’s fiction is not my favorite genre. This book is not good; it earns the first “F” I have given in my tenure as a reviewer. It features unlikable people, right down to the children, a plot that meandered all over the place, and an unsatisfying conclusion.

Hope Collins-Calder is on her second marriage, has a thriving, busy career, and three children. Sounds perfect, doesn’t it? But Hope simply doesn’t have time for everything and everyone. She simply can’t manage her career, the house and her children on her own. Her English husband, Eddie, works at a publishing house in New York, so he lives with his hideous mother-in-law during the week and goes home to Hope on the weekends. Nannies keep quitting because her children drive them off. The oldest, Harry, is a good kid. He is quiet, loves to clean and help Hope. But the middle child, Coco, is a beautiful six-year-old who is spoiled rotten and rules all. Then there’s the baby, nicknamed Booty, who needs constant supervision, otherwise she will wander off. After the latest nanny, Hope decides she needs one from England, because they are well-trained. So she gets Eddie’s sister, Maude, to place an ad in an English paper for her. Maud sends her friend Annabel Quick over to be Hope’s nanny. Annabel is anxious to escape her parents’ recent deaths and heartbreak, so she takes the job.

All the chapters are narrated by Hope, Eddie or Annabel, with only Annabel’s chapters written in first person while the others are written in third person. As for why these characters are so unlikable, let me count the ways. Hope is a shallow woman. I don’t fault her for being driven to succeed. That’s an admirable quality. Hope, however, talks about caring for her kids but cares more about finding a nanny to take care of them. Really, she actually cares more about trying to get her slimy ex-husband, Craig, back. He’s Harry and Coco’s father, Hope frankly considers herself still married to him. She’s always thinking about him and plotting ways to get him back all the while calling Eddie a do-nothing-around-the-house wimp. She always finds something to gripe about with Eddie. After a weekend jaunt to New York to take Harry and Coco to see Craig, Eddie semi-misinterprets a scene with Hope and Craig and leaves her. Smart man.

As for Eddie, well, he is a wimp. He doesn’t fight for Hope, he takes all the crap she gives him, as well as his mother-in-law’s bad treatment. He lets Hope run roughshod all over him. After he leaves Hope, he sort of drifts into a rebound relationship with someone who works for him. He likes the woman, but knows it won’t last, and it doesn’t.

Annabel the nanny, is slightly more likable than everyone else. She’s happy to be part of a family, and she likes the kids. At 40-something, she’s finally coming into her own after the death of her overbearing mother. Annabel has an admirer in a local carpenter, and the local doctor also seems taken with her. The resolution of her love life is surprising and convenient, but not in a good way.

And the kids – what to say about them? Well, Coco’s a spoiled rotten brat, and Hope constantly gives in to her. In the beginning, Hope talks about how she wants to nurture the kids and praise them at the drop of a hat versus Eddie’s theory of being a little more circumspect and disciplined. Coco is a perfect point in Eddie’s favor. The description of Coco reminded me eerily of Jon Benet Ramsey. She’s got white-blond hair and beautiful turquoise eyes, and ends up being discovered for a movie. Hope really does love her kids, but she’s very critical. She thinks to herself several times that though Harry is a wonderful child, he’s a bit of a prig. Hmm, that’s not a nurturing term, is it? Actually, Harry seems like a pretty nice kid. As for Booty (I hate that nickname), she was a fairly normal child, but her constant habit of running off was annoying.

Not only were the characters unlikable, they exhibited no growth. These people stayed exactly the same through most of the book. I kept reading, hoping the set-up of this so very dysfunctional family would pave the way for the beginning of their growth. I kept hoping that Hope wasn’t as stupid and shallow as she seemed, that she would see that she really loved Eddie and that her ex-husband was slime, but nothing much happened till way toward the end. And I’m sorry, but 50 pages of an almost 400-page book is simply not enough time to develop several characters.

This is that rare book that fails on multiple levels. A work of fiction must rely on character and plot, and the characters in Down by the Water ticked me off so badly that I wanted to toss it in the trash. Unfortunately for me, I had to finish it for review purposes. Lucky you – you can skip it entirely and save some trees in the process.