The Kindness of Strangers

Wow. This book was not what I was expecting. It deals with the very dark topic of child sexual abuse, but also about how the kindness, love and compassion of ordinary people can save those who are broken. It shows an in-depth, realistic look at a family going through very difficult challenges and become closer for it.Sarah is a widow trying her best to raise her two sons on her own. Her close friend Courtney helped her through those dark days after her husband's death. But then she learns that she never really knew her friend at all. Agreeing to foster Courtney's son Danny, Sarah is forced to face difficult truths about herself and those she loves.The Kindness of Strangers is the type of book that completely consumes you when you read it, and you can't stop thinking about it and the characters when you put it down. It is equally heartbreaking and heartwarming. It is deep, dark, emotional, and exceptionally heavy, addressing extremely difficult subject matter, but in a very sensitive, compassionate way. I highly recommend it.

This is again a book that has difficult content, but I think that Katrina Kittle did an amazing job writing this novel. It was captivating and was very hard to put down - I was constantly wondering what was going to happen. This novel really examines the terror of realizing that nobody is who they seem..

The first half of this book is tense, depressing and at times repugnant, dealing with a group of parents who share their children sexually in upper middle class suburbia. Jordan, the tween who has been violated, raped by both his parents and their associated deviants for five years, is the focal character of the novel. Sarah is a close friend of Courtney, Jordan's incestuous mother. Each chapter of the book bears the title of a main character, in random order, relating events from his or her point of view; these are Sarah, her two sons, Nate and Danny, as well as the victimized Jordan. This is an effective process to provide emotional and psychological insight about present and past experiences for a number of characters.The last half of the book provides some resolution of tension and a satisfactory solution, but it is a rough ride getting there. The author, Kittle, has captured the anguish and drama of people caught in situations not of their own making. She has been brave to confront such a taboo subject but in places I felt that the characters and events narrated were straining credibility. Moreover, I thought it was significant and rather sad that religious (or spiritual) moral codes, guilt, forgiveness and conflict resolutions were conspicuous by their absence. These are people whose appreciation of religion starts with exclamatory slurs and ends with the obligatory observation of traditions. Human existence can quickly become hollow in an environment ruled by ambition, status and raw sensuality. Perhaps that is the unstated tragedy lurking behind the plot for this somber tale. However, that having been said, this is a story of the triumph of loving and generous compassion offered unconditionally by Sarah and her sons for Jordan. Well done.

I loved this book. It's not a easy book to read as it's about child abuse but Katrina Kittle writes with sensitivity. Its shows how kindness makes such a difference to us in our darkest days.

I bought this book to have something good to read for a long plane ride and it didn't disappoint. It is very well written. I really enjoyed how it was written from the different characters points of view. It really got me thinking about how I would handled something like that if it happened to my family. I finished it while I was away and bought another one of her books for the plane ride back.