The Doll's House by Lisa Unger
This popped up for me on Kindle Unlimited and, since I've read a few Lisa Unger novels, I decided to give it a try. I love flash fiction and short stories, so the idea of finishing this in one sitting was really appealing.
It ended up taking me... four weeks? Not of constant reading, mind you, but more like picking it up, not getting into it, and putting it back down. I was determined to finish it though, and in a way, I'm glad I did, but not because it was an amazing work of fiction.
My biggest issue with this story is that it should have been a novel. At least, with everything contained in it now, it should be a novel to do each point justice.
Possible spoilers below.
The crux of the story is that Jules is moving in with her new boyfriend, Kirin. Seems simple enough, right? Except her writer husband killed himself not long ago. The husband she met in college and had a kid with and managed his career. Plus, she's only known Kirin less than a year. And she's uprooting her teenage daughter to move in with him. That's already a recipe for disaster because what mom wouldn't be more careful about doing that to her daughter with a strange man? But, okay, let's put that disbelief on hold and pretend we don't want to know more about the husband that killed himself.
Scout, her teenage daughter, is apparently an outstanding artist, to the point that kids at her new, elite private school have followed her on social media before she moved there? And they embrace her immediately and become BFFs... during senior year. It's all a bit hard to swallow, but if this was a novel instead of a short story, I'm sure Unger could have made that more believable.
Oh, and Scout can attend this private school because her mom's new boyfriend is a filthy rich puppet maker. He also went to that school. As did his sister who went missing before she graduated. But they were stars of the school, there are shrines to their photos and trophies, and all of Scout's new friends know all about Kirin. Again, this would have been more believable in a novel.
On top of all of that human drama, Kirin also lives in a smart house named Vivi who controls the locks and who has access to what rooms. If Unger wanted this to be a quality short story, I think this whole concept should have been axed. It's too much for a short story. While it adds a lot to the creepiness of Kirin's house, it's just not developed enough to have an impact in a story this length. So this is yet another aspect that points to this idea needing to be a novel.
That's not even getting into the puppets and all the other missing people, who are kind of shoved in at the last minute. I wish this had been written as a teaser for a novel, especially with the cliffhanger ending, instead of trying to cram way too many ideas into a short story with slow pacing and seemingly low stakes (until you get the backstory dump at the last minute, before the action, then it slows down to the end again).
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