2016 book 134

Miranda Beverly-Whittemore's June
The plot synopsis of this novel made me look past that I was pretty meh on Beverly-Whittemore's last one, but I was pretty meh on this one too. It centers on a young woman, depressed, living in the bordering-on-derelict house that belonged to the grandmother who raised her, when a man shows up telling her she's inherited 37 million dollars from a movie star who might have had an affair with said grandmother--and his daughters are determined to prove he didn't. This is all interspersed with flashbacks to the summer before her grandmother's marriage, when a movie was being filmed in town, and there's a little neighbor girl (apparently in love with the grandmother? possibly genderqueer?) working on the set. Oh, and the house is sentient? Things vary between being implausible/being draggy, particularly in the modern chapters ("instead of doing a DNA test, let's INVESTIGATE!") and being melodramatic, though I did enjoy the parts involving the movie set. I mean, this was fine, just not really my thing. B.