Book Review: The Party by Vancouver author Robyn Harding

The Party
By Robyn Harding
Scout Press
Release date: June 6, 2017


As a parent of teenagers, I sometimes thought about all of the things that could go wrong. I’m like that – a little neurotic, a bit of a worrier.
I considered car crashes, bullying, sexual assault. I did the dance between wanting to be the cool parent and wanting to keep my children safe.
While I can breathe a little sigh of relief that my children are both adults now, a parent’s worry is never truly done. As they say, little kids, little problems; big kids, big problems.
In The Party, author Robyn Harding explores the idea of a teenage sweet-16 sleepover gone very wrong. Very, very wrong. In fact, someone even loses an eye.
Whose fault is it? That’s the central question in The Party. Is it the hosts’ fault – the parents of the girl whose birthday it was? The dad bought a bottle of champagne for the teens, the mom took a sleeping pill and drank wine to get a good sleep with the party going on. Were they negligent? Should they pay up for the lost eye?
The Party explores those questions while it exposes the secrets in the lives of everyone involved in the story. The Sanders family lives in San Francisco and appears to lead an idyllic life – key word: appears. Not everything is as it seems. Kim, the mom, is thinking of having an affair. Jeff, the dad, works too hard and even took a micro dose of LSD to ease his stress. Hannah, the daughter who is about to turn 16, is looking to leave her safe group of friends and link up with the cool kids, who are decidedly unsafe.
Bullying, sexting, threats and more are commonplace for the teens in this story, at least one of whom is either a budding psychopath or a badly neglected young girl.
One tragic incident destroys many lives in this fun, but devastating, story of a family falling apart. The narrative shifts perspective with each chapter, a technique that allows the reader to know more than any individual character in the story.
Vancouver author Robyn Harding says on her website that she has written four chick-lit novels, a young adult novel and a comedic memoir with an environmental focus. She’s also a screenwriter and executive producer of an independent film called the Steps.
The Party should catapult her work into the fiction mainstream – it’s well written, fast paced and topical.
Tracy.sherlock@gmail.com