By Kaylie Seed
Stay Where I Can See You by Katrina Onstad was published in March of this year and is Onstad’s fourth novel. Onstad’s story follows the Kaplan family after they have won nearly ten million dollars from a lottery ticket that mom, Gwen, purchased on a whim. After accepting their winnings, the Kaplan’s are unaware just how different their lives will become. The story is told from Gwen’s and her daughter Maddie’s perspectives as Onstad weaves in and out of Gwen’s past (that she has kept secret from family) and the present time with the Kaplan family moving to Toronto, Ontario. It is here that things start changing for the family. Stay Where I Can See You works to parallel Gwen and Maddie’s own coming-of-age stories but instead makes the novel feel like it could be two completely different stories with a plot that tries to connect the two and an ending that makes you go ‘huh?’.
Gwen has kept most of her life a secret from her family and only after they win the jackpot do things in her life start making their way to the surface. This includes themes such as domestic abuse, homelessness, and single parenting. While these are important topics and themes that need to be discussed, they leave the reader not feeling the empathy towards Gwen that Onstad intended. The reader learns quickly that Gwen is an overbearing, protective, and neurotic mother who will do anything to protect her daughter from the bad things in the world. A lot of what Gwen does seems extreme such as constantly following her daughter around well into her teenage years. This makes Gwen difficult to relate to for some readers. There were also a couple of characters in the story that were recurring yet the reader may find themselves forgetting who that character is having to then back track to remember what that character’s place is in the story. The reader may find themselves asking more questions than finding answers as the story goes on.
I appreciate the hard work that goes into creating a novel such as Stay Where I Can See You. I was intrigued to want to finish the book to see what was going to happen and it is a fairly easy read.
If you enjoyed Lisa Jewell’s The Family Upstairs then you may also enjoy Stay Where I Can See You by Katrina Onstad.