Review of ‘Perfect Little Worlds’ by Clifford Mae Henderson

I have never read any of Henderson books before. I know she’s been around for a while and writes books that are a little different. I like different so I decided to give this book a chance. The book is very well written but it is also quite melancholic.

I guess you could call this a lesbian family drama book. That is the closest I could come to putting this novel in a category. The story is about 79-year-old Lucy and the secret between her and her sister that she has kept for 26 years. While some of the story takes place in the present (for the book) most of the novel is what happened 26 years before.

What made the book sad is that Lucy’s mother has Alzheimer’s. While Lucy was living her life in Portland, her autistic sister Alice was taking care of a mother that had been declining rapidly. When I was younger, I took care of my Grandmother with Alzheimer’s before she passed. I will say that a lot of this book hit close to home. Henderson clearly knows what she was writing about.

The whole book is not melancholy, there is some excitement too. Henderson wrote about a real earthquake, the Loma Prieta Earthquake that happened in 1989. Those scenes in the book were pretty intense and realistic.

This is the kind of book I would never re-read, but it did affect me and was very well written. I don’t think this book will appeal to everyone but if you are looking for a realistic lesbian family drama, you might want to try this. I do think I will give reading another Henderson book a shot.

An ARC was given to me by BSB, for an honest review.