Everett Harrington, a hard-lined corporate trader who enjoys using his tough negotiating skills to buy out struggling companies, breaking them apart, and selling the divisions for tremendous profits, has just hired a housekeeping nanny, Greta, to take care of his 12 year old daughter, Renee, and his 16 year old son, Ethan, whose mother passed away several years ago. However, despite the addition of a hopefully calming nanny, the memories leading up to and surrounding the mother’s death continue to stir conflict and dysfunction between the over-controlling Everett, who expects and demands that his son must follow his vision to go to the appropriate college and join his corporate realm, and Ethan, who feels that the memories he has of his mother’s death must lead him down another direction. It is noted that this novel is a prequel to the author’s previous work, “After All is Said and Done”, and it probably would have provided a better foundation to have read the first book prior to reading this, as it took a lot of reading patience to reach an understanding and find a connection with the basically unlikable father and son characters. However, readers who seek to discover deeply inner psychological character themes will find some satisfaction in the mainly well-written 500+ pages of a deeply dysfunctional family drama. ( )

If you're going to write a book set in England at least have the decency to get it Britpicked before you publish. I couldn't even get through the Kindle sample because the American English was so constantly disruptive. ( )