Alyson knows she’s a helicopter parent, but she doesn’t care. When she was 10 she was assaulted by a teenage neighbour, and she’ll do anything to keep her daughter, now the same age, safe. But when all of her girlfriends, all the girls in the dance recital, have a sleepover at Alyson’s sister’s house, Alyson agrees to let Lyla stay for her first night away ever. Everything seems to go fine. But when Lyla is talking to her mother the following evening, she tells her that one of the girls had promised them to secrecy, and then told them something terrible. Everyone–her sister, her husband, her mother–encourages Alyson to wait to go public with this, at least until the mothers have had a chance to talk to their girls. They all assume Alyson is bringing her own issues to bear, and point to other times in the past when she’s over-reacted.
Meanwhile, on the night of the sleepover, Tricia, Alyson’s sister, is wondering what she was thinking. She has 3 sons and has agreed to let each of them invite a friend over, so her house is bulging at the seams with kids ages 10 to 14 or so. She confines the girls to the basement, the boys to their rooms, but in the middle of the night, she and her husband are awakened by the sound of a door opening and closing. Later, her daughter Katy denies that anything all that bad really happened.
Myah is the girls’ dance teacher and also mother to Keera, who is a close friend to Lyla as well as Tricia’s daughter Katy. She’s in the middle of finally breaking it off with her husband, Eddie, a fellow dancer who was never interested in being a father to Keera but who now is demanding that he stay in her life, that she means the world to him and that he misses his family. Is he for real?
Although The Word Game is a short book, it manages to touch on deep things of the heart. While of course its characters are dealing with dark issues like child abuse and assault, its strength lies in its focus on friendships between females. The 3 mothers are also close to Alyson and Tricia’s mother Ida, and the 3 daughters are close friends as well. How do friendships change as we mature, and understand the differences between blind loyalty and speaking truth, between giving advice and yet being supportive when that advice isn’t taken? The trust between the sisters and friends is vital. I enjoyed The Word Game, although I wish it was a bit longer and went more in depth. This is the second book by author Steena Holmes that I’ve read, and I love how invested she is in the restaurants and cafes where her characters meet and the meals that they prepare and eat. It adds life to her characters–Alyson’s concern with health and everyone else’s complaints, her mother Ida’s homemade German goodies, the enormous Thanksgiving feast enjoyed together. And in the end, all the main characters are able to come to place where healing can begin to happen.