Rainwater Legacy Book

Ugh. Let me just count the ways that I loathed this book:
1. The stupid author baited me, and then grossly disappointed. Its one thing to build up the reader's anticipation when there is a legitimate payoff, but to keep reminding us "There's something big coming..." "Something earth-shattering is going to be revealed any time now..." and keep on like that for three-quarters of the book, it darn well better be earth-shattering, or I'm going to be ticked. I was ticked.
2. I couldn't believe the author was really a Booker prize winner. Really? The book that won must have been a million times better than this.
3. The premise of the book was so utterly unbelievable. It is ostensibly a letter written by a mother to her children while they sleep on the eve of "the day" when SOMETHING will be revealed to them that will change their lives completely. Okay, accepting that premise, there is no earthly way the mom could write this entire "letter" (aka, book) in the four hours between 2 AM and dawn she claims to be spending on it. Even if you were reading the book aloud, it would take more than four hours, let alone writing it. Every 100 pages or so the author would even bother to mention the time, unaware, apparently, that the reader can do the math and that in the fifteen minutes since the mom last mentioned what time it was, we've been reading for a couple of hours. What?
4. Another unrealistic aspect of the premise is that the mom is telling her teenage kids the entire history of her relationship with their father, her husband. But it SOOO does not read that way. It reads like a modern PG-13 novel with plenty of little sex scenes and details thrown in to appease the salacious-minded reader. I don't care how open and honest you were trying to be with your kids, you would use a lot more euphamisms for the stuff they really needed to know, and definitely not tell them a TON of stuff that was in this book because the whole time they'd be covering their eyes and saying, "Eww! I don't want to know that!" I was grossed out, and they weren't even my parents.
5. I felt like the author maybe started this book as a writing exercise to see if he could tell the whole story of a family's relationship just as a letter written in one night. There are all these bits where the mom is commenting on her kids' personalities (in a letter to them), but it feels like pure exposition. It didn't feel real at all, and if it was an experiment on the author's part, it failed.
6. Hopefully by now I've convinced you that a bikini wax would be a more pleasant use of your time than reading this book. If not, and you're still debating picking it up, please be warned that I am now going to ruin the "big surprise." If, however, you're already determined to stay away from this forehead-slapping mess, then this should give you some reassurance: Throughout the book (even after the "secret" is revealed) the mom says over and over again (oh yeah, that's another complaint. This book was horrendously repetitious) that the kids could basically react any way to the news they're about to receive and their parents wouldn't blame them. She likens it to a bomb about to go off that will either immediately shatter the happiness the family has cultivated for years, or else remain ticking ominously in the background as the family carries on in a strained attempt at normalcy. So, what information could be so terrible? Oh, that the kids were conceived with the help of an anonymous sperm donor. Their dad isn't their biological father. I actually kept reading after the "Your dad isn't your dad" bit, because I was expecting something more mind-blowing like, "Your Uncle Charlie is your REAL father!" Or something like that. But, nope. Just a sperm donor. Honestly, if I were in those kids' shoes, I would have a hard time caring. I mean, what does this change for them, other than some possible ramifications regarding genetic diseases? Nothing. It's not like sperm-donor-dad is going to swoop in from the wings at this point and offer to be part of their lives. Their dad is still the only dad they've ever had and the only dad they ever will have, so how does it matter how they were biologically conceived? The whole premise was so ridiculous that I couldn't believe the author actually expected us to swallow this.
7. The letter ends with the mom reminding the kids about a time when they nearly drowned at the beach and their dad saved them. It was clearly meant as proof of his fatherly love (or something like that), but it had the feeling of a Lifetime movie plot, in addition to being a poor and half-hearted ending to the book.
So, all in all, I strongly disliked this book, and while I've enjoyed venting a bit on the author (stupid, stupid author), I'm more mad at myself for having kept reading. Totally a waste of time.