Bonita Avenue roman

Bonita Avenue is the unraveling of the Sigerius Family because of SECRETS. Relationships are destroyed by lies, minds destroyed by madness.
The characters in the scen and Aaron Bever, Joni’s fella,
Siem Sigerius
and his wife, Tineke,
Siem Sigerius, a former athlete and current math genius,
Tineke,

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Siem's wife
Joni, Siem's headstrong daughter;
Aaron Bever, Joni’s fella,
Siem's son, Wilbert, is in prison for killing a supervisor with a sledgehammer.
This is intriguing, but I just couldn't understand a lot of the situations. There were places and names I didn't understand. It was a good book, just couldn't understand it.

I received this book from Blogging For Books for this review.

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I tried three times to read this book, but I never could figure out a) what it was about and b) who was talking. One minute Siem was talking, on the next page he was dead. The plot never engaged me. So if you are looking for a synopsis, I’ll have to give you the one I pulled from Amazon:
Siem

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Sigerius is a beloved, brilliant professor of mathematics with a promising future in politics. His family—including a loving wife, two gorgeous, intelligent stepdaughters and a successful future son-in-law—and carefully appointed home in the bucolic countryside complete the portrait of a comfortable, morally upright household. But there are elements of Siem's past that threaten to upend the peace and stability that he has achieved, and when he stumbles upon a deception that’s painfully close to home, things begin to fall apart. A cataclysmic explosion in a fireworks factory, the advent of internet pornography, and the reappearances of a discarded, dangerous son all play a terrible role in the spectacular fragmentation of the Sigerius clan.
A riveting portrait of a family in crisis and the ways that even the smallest twists of fate can forever change our lives, Bonita Avenue is an incendiary, unpredictable debut of relationships torn asunder by lies, and minds destroyed by madness.

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Make a man into too much--judo world champ, math genius, head of university, govt minister--then twist his world with an abandoned dead wife, ignored criminal trash son, porno-queen stepdaughter, and nightly wrestling with almost-step-son. Then bump off this way-too-much guy (self-done, no secret,

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reader finds out early).

Now tell the story from both ends of the action, alternating, moving inwards towards the middle when the deed happened, placing the middle at the end of the book. Leaving family detritus strewn wildly in both directions. Wearing out the reader.

Also, know diddly about the weather in Berkeley and San Francisco where some action happens during days that are "hot and humid" when the family goes to the beach everyday???? It's never hot and humid there. And the beach is for chilling (most of the time) in the damp drippy fog. Makes you wonder what else Buwalda had wrong. Besides psychology, of course.

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I won this book on Goodreads and I always try to finish the books I win. But this one, even though I stuck with it for over 200 pages, was just a chaotic mess. It bounced around from one story or thought without warning even within a chapter. It went from current time to flashbacks but they didn't

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feel like flashbacks and a subject was covered and then quickly abandoned without any resolution.

It is totally confusing and I didn't care at all about the characters. I wasn't invested at all and when that happens I don't like wasting my time with a book. It should never take me this long to read a book unless it's 1,000 pages.

This book was not for me. Might be for someone else. I hate to abandon books but I did on this one.

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Compelling, if dark, for much of the book. Then it all just kind of fell apart.