I have a confession.
I never finished reading Little Women.
I tried several times.
I felt like it was something I should read.
Perhaps it was even a book I was assigned to read for an English course (I don’t remember.).
Either way, I couldn’t finish the book. There were just too many sisters.
To this day I couldn’t tell you how many Little Women are in that book, but it seemed like a million to me. I couldn’t keep the characters straight.
I felt the same way about Lisa Unger‘s book, Fragile.
Fragile was reminiscent of Little Women because of the number of intertwined characters, but that’s where the similarities end.
The story is about a small town called The Hollows where everyone seems to know just about everyone else.
The main character is Maggie, a life-long resident and town psychiatrist, whose husband is a police officer. When their son’s girlfriend goes missing, the whole town focuses on the similarities between her disappearance and that of another girl from Maggie’s teenage years who later was found dead.
As the book continues you learn how many people in the town were involved in the first and second disappearance. You also learn, through the characters, how Maggie’s family is tied to both.
I don’t regret reading this book because the storyline was fascinating and the writing was solid. I just wish that a couple of the periphery characters were eliminated.
