eARC Review: Watching Glass Shatter by James J. Cudney

Title: Watching Glass Shatter

Author: James J. Cudney

Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Published: October 8th 2017

Dates Read: 10/13/2017 – 10/20/2017

Source: eARC received from author

My Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

The wealthy Glass family lost its patriarch, Benjamin Glass, sooner than expected. Benjamin’s widow, Olivia, and her 5 sons each react to his death in their own way while preparing for the reading of his will. Olivia receives a very unexpected confession from her late husband about one of their sons that could shatter the whole family.

Prior to revealing the secret to her children, Olivia must figure out which boy Ben refers to in the confession he left her in his will. While the family attorney searches for the mysterious Rowena Hector whom Ben says holds the answers, Olivia asks her sons to each spend a week with her as she isn’t ready to let go of the past. When Olivia visits her sons, she quickly learns that each one has been keeping his own secret from her. Olivia never expected her remaining years would be so complex and life-altering, but she will not rest until her family is reunited after Ben’s untimely death.

We all need family. We all want to fit in. We’re all a mix of quirky personalities. Will Olivia be able to fix them or will the whole family implode? What will she do when she discovers the son behind Ben’s secret? Check out this ensemble cast where each family member’s perspective is center stage, discovering along the way who might feel the biggest impact from all the secrets. Welcome to being an honorary member of the Glass family.

A couple months back I read the first couple of chapters of this book because James posted it on his website. After reading those chapters I knew two things. I knew I wanted to continue reading about the Glass family and I knew I was going to end up liking the book. However, I never expected I was going to love it as much as I did.

I don’t know where to start with this review. Watching Glass Shatter is James’ debut novel but it comes across as it was written by a well seasoned author. This is the second book I have read this year that is a debut novel that blew me away.

This book is told from multiple POV (10 to be exact). Normally if there is more than 2 POV I struggle to keep up with everything and everyone. I struggled a little bit to begin with but because everything flowed so seamlessly from chapter to chapter it became easier pretty quickly.

This is a very character driven book. I can’t say enough about the characters James has created. He done an amazing job at bringing them to life for me. I felt like I was living through all the ups and downs right there with them.

I couldn’t stand Olivia to start with. Honestly she was kind of a bitch in my opinion and I had a hard time connecting with her to begin with but once she started seeing the error of her ways and started working on herself she grew on me.

As for the 5 boys well it’s hard to pick a favorite because I loved them all for different reasons. I really did love Caleb though. I grew to really care for all the characters like they were my own family.

James brought out so many of my emotions from Anger at what Ben did and what the boys were doing to love and happiness and heartbreak. I laughed and I cried. This was just a perfectly well rounded book.

As for the plot of the book I don’t want to say to much because I don’t want to give anything away. I was able to guess what Ben’s secret was from the Prologue, well part of it anyways. I had no clue which son it affected until it was revealed at the end. Being able to guess it that quickly though didn’t really take anything from the story for me. What Ben did is revealed pretty early on anyways.

I wasn’t expecting that ending at all. Never even crossed my mind that something like that would happen. I knew it was coming from earlier on in the book but that didn’t stop me from crying like a baby.

If you like character driven books with lots of family drama I highly recommend you read this book, you want be disappointed.

Lastly I Just want to say thank you to the author for providing me with an eARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

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Have you read Watching Glass Shatter? Does my review make you want to read it? If you have read it and you want to talk about it some more I would love to discuss it with you.