THE RADLEYS (no relation to Boo)

"Your instincts are wrong.  Animals rely on insticts for their daily survival, but we are not beasts. We are not lions or sharks or vultures. We are civilized, and civilization only works if insticts are supressed.  So do your bit for society and ignore those dark desires inside you. -The Abstainer's Handbook (second edition), p. 54"

Wow. I mean, how could you not want to keep on reading with that intro? Especially if you are someone like me who naively picked this book up and thought it was a spin-off of To Kill a Mockingbird.  Matt Haig's The Radleys is a dark yet touching story of a family with a big secret.  On the outside they look like every other family in Orchard Lane, but everyone in town knows there is something oddly unsettling about Helen, Peter, and their children. When the cracks in their "every family" facade start to show, the Radley family must face the fact they are not like everyone else; they are something much beyond the ordinary.  

I'm not going to spoil anything by telling you what makes the members of the Radley family...special. You'll want to find that out for yourself. What I can tell you is that this is a captivating story of a family's struggle to fit in (and who can't relate to that?). Matt Haig does an incredible job of humanizing these superhuman characters by expertly weaving the Radleys' supernatural struggles and banal family issues together in this entertaining novel.

Recommended for: Those who might not be all in on supernatural genres but are willing to give something new a try. You won't regret it!