#MMBBR #Review #FirstLine Things Unsaid by Diana Y. Paul @DianaPaul10

Jules, her sister Joanne, and her brother Andrew all grew up in the same household―but their varying views of and reactions to their experiences growing up have made them all very different people. Now, as adults with children of their own, they are all faced with the question of what to do to help their parents, who insist on maintaining the upscale lifestyle they’re accustomed to despite their mounting debts. A deft exploration of the ever-shifting covenants between parents and children, Things Unsaid is a ferocious tale of family love, dysfunction, and sense of duty over forty years.

Diana Y. Paul is the award-winning author of Things Unsaid, her debut novel (SheWrites Press: 2015). It has won the award for best New Adult Fiction from Beverly Hills Book Awards for 2016 and has been ranked #2 in the "Top 14 Books about Families Crazier Than Yours" (https://www.brit.co/dysfunctional-family-books/ ). Diana has also written three books on Buddhism, one of which has been translated into Japanese and German (Women in Buddhism, University of California Press). She is a former professor at Stanford University in Buddhist Studies and the role of women in religion and culture.

Diana was born in Akron, Ohio and is a graduate of Northwestern University with a degree in both psychology and philosophy and the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a Ph.D in Buddhist Studies . Her short stories have appeared in a number of literary journals and she is currently working on a second novel, A Perfect Match. She lives in Carmel, CA with her husband and loves to create mixed media art, focusing on printmaking. Her art has been exhibited in California, Hawaii, and Japan. Whenever possible, Diana and her husband love to visit their adult daughter and her family in San Francisco and their son in Los Angeles. To learn more about her and her work, visit her author website at http://www.dianaypaul.com, her blog on movies, art, and food at http://www.unhealedwound.com or follow her on Twitter: @DianaPaul10.

An outstanding book that is not only deeply honest, heartbreaking and hopeful, but also brilliant, poignant and original.  Paul draws and fleshes the characters out beautifully...allowing flaws and imperfections to show.  It captures what is at the heart of all of us and showcases that life is what we make it. It is thoughtful, precise and allows the reader inside family, dysfunction and all.  Brilliant, just brilliant!  5 stars

#FirstLine ~ After penetrating the chain-link fence and knocking over the soccer goalpost, her father's car had landed in the deserted grassy field.