Monday, Sunday

In Monday, Sunday, author Fenton Grace takes us through a week, from Monday to Sunday, in the life of protagonist Laney Secord, thirty-something widow and single mom living in a small town. She trained as a social worker, but life insurance left her wealthy enough to stay home. She has time on her hands, no apparent interests, and no friends, except Erin, whose husband she had an affair with while her own husband was still alive. When sixteen-year-old Eagle Scout Christopher, redolent with beautiful young manhood, knocks on her door while raising funds for the troop he shares with her son, the chemistry between them ignites, eventually consuming them and innocent victims.

The book is well-written and with a creeping edginess. The reader starts off sympathetic to Laney. She is lonely. Christopher is not so much a boy as a young man and the aggressor in the relationship: saying he loves her, initiating the intimacy, breaking into her home, and resorting to blackmail as she tries to end the relationship. We are in Laney’s head, seeing the dilemma of her attraction while understanding its wrongness. It becomes hard to see her as the victim, however, as we learn more about her past, see her also enter a relationship with Chris’s father, and fail to set boundaries with Chris that, as the adult, is her responsibility to do. She grows entitled and careless, and tragedy results.

My one criticism of the book is some point-of-view problems: the reader is taken out of the story at times as the narrative voice comments on what Laney feels and how she looks (she wouldn’t be aware of how she looks and would just feel, not comment that she feels that way.) Overall, this story kept me turning the pages in its growing creepiness.