What do we inherit from our parents? Is the child of a thief destined to be a thief? Can we break familial patterns? That’s the question at the heart of Our Beautiful Mess.

Connie has built the perfect life for herself. She has a gorgeous home, a loving, kind, and gentle husband, a thriving career, and three lovely daughters. Her eldest, Fran, is away at uni but is on her way home for Christmas, and as Connie puts the last touches on her artfully crafted tree, she can’t help but think how lucky she is. And how an indiscretion early in her marriage almost brought all of that crashing down around her. She pushes the thought firmly away. The holidays are a busy season for her; she hosts dozens of family members and can’t afford to be distracted by the past.

Fran’s homecoming does not go quite as expected. Connie spots right away that Fran is pregnant and is upset that the twenty-one-year-old seems determined to keep the baby. Connie is also a bit disturbed by Zac, Fran’s boyfriend and the father of her unborn grandchild. It must have been a bad omen that Connie remembered the past as she put ornaments on the tree, because Zac is the spitting image of John Harding, the dangerous, irresponsible man who had led Connie into the worst mistake she ever made.

Connie does her absolute best to navigate the complicated whirl of holiday gatherings with calm and aplomb, but that becomes increasingly difficult as the drama surrounding Fran’s pregnancy spills over onto their whole family and friend group. Unbeknownst to Connie, she is not the only person in that house keeping secrets. And one of the mysteries surrounding another person just may kill them all.

I can’t tell you much about the convoluted plot of this novel beyond the above, because it’s meant to be a puzzle until near the end. The story’s twists and turns all tie together so that the tale is less a rollercoaster of suspense and more a tangled knot of sticky strings. Fair warning, I found it all quite unbelievable.

The narrative unfolds from multiple points of view, giving us a deep dive into the feelings of John, Zac, Connie, and Fran. I would love to say they are wonderful people, but they are actually on the extreme end of mess – to be expected, I suppose, given the title. Fran is perhaps the most understandable. She’s at the age where she thinks of herself as an adult but can’t quite pull off adulting. She’s a privileged young woman – the family’s casual wealth underpins the whole story – and is used to having mummy and daddy fix all wrongs. Like many social media warriors today, she has no trouble keeping boxes full of Tiffany jewelry in her room while scorning money, imperialism, and the social order that places people like her (rich and white) on top. Being young and beautiful means she has no trouble finding folks to be intimate with and loves the idea of being sexually uninhibited. She learned, aged fifteen, that she had endometriosis and could not get pregnant easily (if at all), and this actually drives a lot of her behaviors. Having been told she wouldn’t be able to have kids before she had even fully processed being a woman had been a blow, and having lost a primary component of her sexual self, she flaunted convention and revelled in the fun factor. Her baby, therefore, is a miracle and one she plans to cherish and celebrate. But it is also a burden; Fran carries a heavier load than just a child as she navigates the festivities around her.

John and Fran could be kindred spirits. Like her, he spent much of his youth focused on fun. He can’t remember most of the names of the people he’s been with, and while he’s surprised when he finds himself entangled in Connie’s life once more, he makes it clear his relationship with her wasn’t a treasured memory. He’s mellowed as he’s aged, become more practical and more concerned with building decent relationships with the men around him, but the bone-deep misogyny that had him using and discarding women in his youth is still firmly in place. I honestly couldn’t understand how or why women would have been charmed by him once he opened his mouth.

Connie falling for him didn’t completely surprise me, though. She admits her attraction had been superficial – he was completely gorgeous in his youth – and as a photographer of small renown, she has always been attracted to beauty. While she has matured and grown a bit wiser, she is still drawn primarily to style over substance. She is concerned with the image her home, friends, and family put forth and has always longed for a literally picture-perfect life. It is no surprise, perhaps, that her husband and two other daughters don’t exist in any sort of depth in the story until near the end, because in many ways, they are just props to Connie, loved more for the role they play in her life (perfect spouse, darling daughters) than for who they actually are. Connie isn’t a bad person – she is kind and tries to be thoughtful of the needs of everyone around her – she just isn’t living deeply enough to intelligently handle tragedy when it arrives at her door.

Zac is a dreamer. A middle-class kid with practical parents, he’s always been drawn to the fun, the new, the different, and glittery. Fran embodies everything he admires; her poised sophistication, keen intelligence, and confidence are qualities he wants for himself and his future. A trivial mistake he made has snowballed because of his own inept handling, and he now worries that not only will it affect him, but it will absolutely destroy whatever future he could have with Fran and the baby. Selfishly, he remains enmeshed with them, hoping it will all somehow work itself out.

It is no wonder that these characters find themselves tangled in the problems that drive Our Beautiful Mess. Their attitude that life owes them easy solutions to the trouble they create drives the plot, but their selfishness is so innocent and subconscious; they are so completely unaware of the fact that they are being demanding and self-indulgent that we feel a tad more empathy than disgust for them. If you are a fan of Ms. Parks or love emotional, jumbled domestic thrillers, I think the strong, complex characters will ensure you will like this one. The author’s prose flows eloquently across the page, and she pulls you easily into the chaos that our entitled little band creates for itself. If, on the other hand, you demand credibility from your thrillers, you’ll need to skip this. It just doesn’t meet that standard.