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There are currently 39 member reviews
for Rise
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Mary M. (Lexington, KY)
Inspiring and Disturbing
I was looking forward to reading this book. I was expecting an inspiring story about a family building a house. However after reading the book I didn't like it at all. The sections about Cara and her children building their house were interesting and inspirational. The sections about the abuse were graphic and disturbing. It made the book unpleasant for me to read. I wouldn't recommend this book for a book club. It might be a good book for an abuse survivors support group to read.
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Jan Z. (Jefferson, SD)
Rise: How a House Built a Family by Cara Brookins
Cara Brookins's debut memoir "Rise: How a House Built a Family" was at best interesting and heart warming, and at worst rather disjointed and a bit muddled sometimes. She's a good writer! - this story about how she, along with three of her children (she has four kids, but the youngest was too young to participate, other than to add some comic relief now and then) undertook building a home was coupled with another equally interesting story about the family recovering from a relationship involving domestic violence and severe mental illness.
Her writing style is warm, intimate and plain spoken so it drew me in like a good conversation. The two-part story kept me interested, whereas I think either story told by itself might not have been so engaging.
I liked how she wrote lovingly and respectfully about all her children, and also about her own parents even though her own childhood hadn't been all idyllic.
I wished she would have tied up what I feel were some loose ends. She didn't go into the end of her third marriage to Matt yet her second chapter told of a harrowing episode of domestic violence in that marriage. And there were also several construction issues that weren't resolved for me as the reader. The imagined Benjamin and Caroline characters were rather odd. These are minor complaints though, I overall enjoyed reading this book and will read the novel she talked about working on if she ever publishes it.
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Kathy K. (ME)
Inspiring family memoir
Overcoming hardship is inspiring on its own, but reading Brookins' story of her family not only enduring harrowing abuse and stalking but truly rising above it to become stronger as individuals and as a family is awe-inspiring. As a mother, it is mind-blowing to think of having four children under 18 on a building site, let alone having three of them assisting in building a house (with no prior experience) while keeping a toddler safe and worrying about being stalked by a mentally ill ex. Brookins is truly an inspiration and brave to share her story so openly and honestly.
The chapters of Brookins' book alternate between Rise (building the house together) and Fall (flashbacks to episodes of abuse and trauma at the hands of her ex-husbands). The Fall chapters detract from the flow of the book and can be confusing as they are not written in chronological order with each other. Also, while this method of alternating between flashbacks and present tense is common and often successful, it doesn't entirely work in this memoir given the sharp contrast in tone between her stories. The final chapter (an epilogue of sorts) feels a bit rushed with some of the resolutions to their issues seeming abruptly explained. Still, this is a worthwhile and thought-provoking read that sheds light into the intensity and pervasiveness of abuse on victims' lives.
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Portia A. (Monroe Township, NJ)
At what cost
I had a hard time with this story. Here is a woman who made some really bad choices, and survived.She and her children were fearful of two of her ex husbands, with good cause, but she and they built a house although the children were just that-children.
Do I admire what she did? Not really. Yes, the work in building the house was immense, but being a good mother and raising good children could have been accomplished without the hammer, nails and exhaustion.
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