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    The Precious One: A Novel
    The Precious One: A Novel
    The Precious One: A Novel
    Audiobook12 hours

    The Precious One: A Novel

    Written by Marisa de los Santos

    Narrated by Arielle DeLisle and Abby Craden

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    From the New York Times bestselling author of Belong to Me, Love Walked In, and Falling Together comes a captivating novel about friendship, family, second chances, and the redemptive power of love.

    In all her life, Eustacia “Taisy” Cleary has given her heart to only three men: her first love, Ben Ransom; her twin brother, Marcus; and Wilson Cleary—professor, inventor, philanderer, self-made millionaire, brilliant man, breathtaking jerk: her father.

    Seventeen years ago, Wilson ditched his first family for Caroline, a beautiful young sculptor. In all that time, Taisy’s family has seen Wilson, Caroline, and their daughter, Willow, only once.

    Why then, is Wilson calling Taisy now, inviting her for an extended visit, encouraging her to meet her pretty sister—a teenager who views her with jealousy, mistrust, and grudging admiration? Why, now, does Wilson want Taisy to help him write his memoir?

    Told in alternating voices—Taisy’s strong, unsparing observations and Willow’s naive, heartbreakingly earnest yearnings—The Precious One is an unforgettable novel of family secrets, lost love, and dangerous obsession, a captivating tale with the deep characterization, piercing emotional resonance, and heartfelt insight that are the hallmarks of Marisa de los Santos’s beloved works.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateMar 24, 2015
    ISBN9780062309211
    Author

    Marisa de los Santos

    Marisa de los Santos is a New York Times bestselling author and award-winning poet with a PhD in literature and creative writing. She lives in Wilmington, Delaware, with her family.

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    Reviews for The Precious One

    4/5

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    • 3/5
      I was reading all the reviews of four and five stars and wondering why this book didn't affect me the way it did many of the other readers. Not that there is anything wrong with this book, it was good, a comfort read if you will and somewhat predictable. I enjoyed the character of Taisy but found the character of Willow at times irritating. Think at sixteen she acted very child like, in the book this seems to be the result of homeschooling, awkwardness in social settings. Although I suppose there are children who are homeschooled that have this problem, I know many including my son's wife and her nor her siblings acted anything like this. Did deal with some weighty issues in a respectful way and that I appreciated. So for this was good, but not anything as special as other readers seem to find it.ARC from publisher.
    • 4/5
      This was a very enjoyable story. De los Santos is one of my favorite authors. I love being able to be immersed in a story which has a happy ending. By telling a story through the voices of half-sisters a full story story emerges. Although I felt the happily-ever-after ending was a bit contrived, I still love it when the story ends in happiness. I even felt some compassion for Taisy's and Willow’s father.
    • 5/5
      Beautifully written.I really enjoyed the story of both sisters. High school is a maze to navigate, even more so coming from Willow's isolated upbringing.Taisy has to come to terms with her desire for her father's love and approval that he never gave her. How can her father have no love for her or her brother and yet love Willow so completely?
    • 4/5
      Though it took me a little while to get into, The Precious One eventually hooked me. I enjoyed the characters and plot, and feel that this is another good novel by de lots Santos.
    • 5/5
      I received this book as part of LT's Early Reviewer program and thoroughly enjoyed it. Taisy's mother and father separated when she and her twin brother, Marcus, were 18. In almost 20 years, Taisy has seen and spoken to her father only once as he rejected his old family in favor of his new wife and child, a girl named Willow. Taisy's father contacts her and asks her to come to his home...her old hometown and home of her first love, Ben. Despite the way Taisy's father has treated her in the past, she still longs for a connection with him. She also finds herself becoming emotionally involved with her father's new family. The novel also uses Willow voice to tell the other part of the story. Willow grew up being homeschooled by her brilliant father, a man who loves her deeply and has protected her from the world. She is beautiful, innocent, and brilliant herself, but now has to start attending high school and make her way in a social world, encountering those with cruel intentions in situations she was not prepared to face. The characters are deeply thought out and reveal themselves in ways that draw the reader in, while at the same time, becoming a novel I hated to put down. The Precious One explores all sorts of relationships, both the positive and negative ones, from the parent/child, lover, sibling, and friendship, and the book has all the elements of a fun story, too...love, betrayal, secrets, resolutions. I loved it!
    • 4/5
      A truly touching tale of a distant father and his two daughters, each of whom struggles in their own way to establish a relationship with him. They have success, however, in building a relationship with each other, despite the division of divorce and the eighteen years between them. A good, compassionate story of love, family, and second chances.
    • 5/5
      To think that I didn't realize she had another book out there waiting for me to find! Her writing just makes me want to read, or listen in this case---wonderful, wonderful story material that flows. I loved the double narrative between Taisy and Willow.
    • 3/5
      Taisy was more likeable, but Willow was much more of a complex and layered character. Their father, Wilson, was a sad caricature of a grouchy old man. I did like the storyline for Willow, but the overly saccharine ending was so cheesy. I've realized that is the formula that the author uses. The story begins with abandonment, tragedy, recovery, followed by unbelievable family reunions and grudges being swept away with the wind. It was refreshing in her first book Love Walked In, but now its just tired, predictable and unrealistic. I skimmed the last 20 pages of the book because I'd already spent too much time of my life on it to stop so close to the end.
    • 3/5
      Read this an as ebook while travelling and somehow neglected to record anything about it. My memories that there were passages, observations, and thoughts that swept me away, but I unfortunately neglected to note them. I wish my memory was better, or that my note taking abilities more honed. Phooey.
    • 4/5
      I loved this new book by Marisa los Santos. Wilson Cleary, a pompous, self righteous man, abandons his first wife and twins, Taisy and Marcus, when he marries Caro and has another daughter, Willow. He asks Taisy to visit under the pretext that he wants her to write his biography. Taisy becomes close to Willow, and helps her sister who has lived a very sheltered life.Wonderful writing! Great book!
    • 4/5
      I was drawn to this story because like Taisy, I have a twin brother. I was not disappointed. Among other things, I really enjoyed reading about the close relationship they shared. The book was written well and read superbly by Arielle DeLisle and Abby Craden who completely got into the characters’ psyches. As I listened, I could actually visualize each character as a real person. They were very gifted readers.The story carefully develops the lives of Eustacia Cleary (Taisy), and Willow Cleary. Born 18 years apart, Willow’s birth caused cataclysmic changes in Taisy’s. Taisy and her twin brother, Marcus, lived with their mom and their dad, Wilson Cleary, somewhat happily, until Taisy’s boyfriend, Ben, discovered her dad with another woman, a young and very pregnant one. Wilson Cleary’s secret affair caused major changes in their lives. Wilson Cleary can only be described as a very selfish, egotistic, narcissistic, sometimes cruel and mean, pompous man, living in a world of his own creation; but he is brilliant, none the less, and he is a quite accomplished and well-respected scientist and teacher.The chapters alternate between Willow and Taisy, revealing many similarities and parallels in their lives. Unbeknownst to each other, each was wrenched suddenly from an environment in which they were comfortable and thrown into an alien place for which they had no frame of reference. When young, Taisy, like Willow had a childhood sweetheart. Both made foolhardy decisions that wreaked havoc on their lives and had serious consequences. Both felt the burden of sibling rivalry for many years, resenting any attention given to the other, believing it to be unfair. Both believed they owned the right to their father’s love, but Taisy, with her family, was totally rejected, while Willow was embraced wholeheartedly with unfettered joy by her father and her mother, Caro, Wilson’s new wife. Both had to learn to navigate their new surroundings and the changes in their lives. How they worked out their problems presented an interesting and thorough investigation of their personalities and character. Their struggles united them.Taisy was a free spirited young teen. She had angered her father with her behavior, which was oddly similar to his in its imprudence, but he never saw any of his own behavioral mistakes. After her mom moved the family away from their home town, because of Wilson Cleary’s indiscretion and the divorce, Marcus completely rejected their father, but Taisy continued to want his love and approval, an almost impossible task, for the following decade and a half. Wilson was judgmental and harsh and seemed to live in another time frame. He wanted nothing to do with his “first” family and totally divorced them from his life after a scene at his home at Willow’s first birthday celebration. Wilson’s manner of speech was more like that in a classic novel than that of a current day father. He was very formal and demanded strict obedience. His rules were immutable. He was not affectionate toward the twins, but he was openly affectionate toward Willow, whom he home schooled and kept very sheltered. However, he created enormous family tension with his distorted view of life because it was exceedingly difficult to live up to his high expectations.. Willow was a naïve child, never really allowed to be a child. She mimicked Wilson and spoke with his formal speech making her sound a bit pretentious and haughty. She was not well socialized with other children. She made snap judgments about people when they made her uncomfortable or she did not understand them. She was lonely and imagined herself in love with her English teacher, Mr. Insley, who was also lonely and lacking in judgment, although he was 30 to her 16 years. As the reader tries to understand why Mr. Cleary is so difficult and demanding, and tries to understand what shaped his character, the book circles back and exposes his difficult childhood. As the reader discovers his secret, painful past, and reflects on his current arrogance, it may be difficult, still, to view him with kindness. He has created feelings of anger and pain in the children from his rejected family, possibly without realizing that he, like his own bitter and cruel father, was behaving badly. The ending is a bit like a fairy tale with everyone hoping to have a love fest that runs amok. The reader watches as two parallel families attempt to work out their problems with some degree of success and two evolving love stories resolve themselves happily. For sure, the reader will not be bored.
    • 4/5
      Wilson Clearly, 71, left his first family seventeen years before, and now has a sixteen-year-old daughter named Willow with his second wife Caro. He has never expressed anything but contempt for his original set of children, twins Taisy (Eustacia) and Marcus, who are presently aged 35. In fact, at Wilson’s request, they have not even visited him in fifteen years. But while Taisy describes her father a “breathtaking jerk,” she has always hungered for his love and approval.Wilson recently had heart surgery, and apparently, something about this brush with mortality caused him to call Taisy and ask that she and Marcus come to his house for a visit. Marcus immediately refuses, but Taisy, always harboring a twinge of hope about her father, agrees to go back to her old hometown for a visit. While there, she also plans to look up her former “true love” Ben, with whom her relationship ended for reasons unclear as the story begins.The narration by Taisy alternates with Willow’s story. Willow is devoted to her father, and another daughter with a possible claim on his affections represents a huge threat to her. In addition, she has other new things to worry her. Since her father’s illness, she has been attending a private high school, which is a huge leap from the home schooling she had all her life previous to this. To say Willow is naive in the ways of adolescent life is an understatement, and when her English teacher detects her distress and takes her under his wing, it seems like a godsend to her. She has no clue why a boy in her English class whom she also befriends seems so hostile to her developing relationship with her teacher. All of these plot threads unfold and interweave in a compelling way, with good pacing, tension, and romance in the parallel generations.Discussion: The central male characters are oddly only one way or the other: wonderful or terrible, and we never really do learn why Wilson is such a jerk. But the female protagonists are more nicely drawn and quite likable, and the ending is just as one would want.Evaluation: I liked this much better than the author’s previous book (Falling Together), although not as much as Belong to Me, the book which made many readers fall in love with Marisa de los Santos. Nevertheless, she is a talented writer, and this is an enjoyable read.
    • 5/5
      I absolutely loved this book. Once again Marisa De Los Santos has woven a tale of broken lives that have somehow found a way to become whole again in an unexpeted way. The story of Taisy and Willow and their father Wilson will captivate you from the beginning and leave you breathless at the end. Beautiful.
    • 3/5
      Another good book by de los Santos and one I enjoyed. The story revolves around a young woman who returns home after seventeen years to confront her father and to write his memoir that he has requested. The family was divided many years ago after a divorce and the father remarries a younger woman. A child from that marriage was the most important one it seems but after a while they all come together and talk about past mistakes and secrets.
    • 5/5
      Not my favorite Marisa de los Santos, and still a darned good read!
    • 4/5
      Am I the only one who gets disgruntled when EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER in a novel is pretty/handsome/gorgeous/slim ? This was still a fun read, with a consuming plot (except for the reveal, which is a bit silly), but let's bring on the normal looking people, shall we? Wilson was a horrible father to heroine Taisy and her brother Marcus, having been an ice cold, disengaged father until he abandoned his wife and children when he impregnated a younger woman. But now he's summoned Taisy, a ghostwriter by profession, to work on his biography, as he's had a stroke and is feeling mortal. She is interested enough in payback and in her half-sister, the willowy homeschooled Willow, to obey and to move into her horrible father's poolhouse. And then of course there's her still-handsome ex-BF Ben, whom she abandoned when her father forced her to give him up. And - get this - Ben's never gotten married! Nor has Taisy! And Willow is thrust into public school life, where the handsomest boy in the class and a teacher become slaves to her charms! I WONDER WHAT WILL HAPPEN!Okay, I'm making it sound worse than it really was. I liked this story enormously, especially as a beach read, and I might visit her back catalogue. But the flaws are evident throughout.
    • 5/5
      i really enjoyed this. it was a good read on the plane
    • 5/5
      While I am as avid a reader as I was when I was a kid, my reading experience is often different. Even with very good books, I seldom have the kind of transporting experience that I had when I was a teenager and a book would just grab me and not let me go. When I find a book that can do that now, at 43 years old, I am in love - and Marisa de los Santos' books always do that for me. I fall in love with her characters, and when I finish the book, I actually miss them as if they are real people. She also has a magical way of putting words together, so that her prose sounds more like poetry. I listened to the audiobook edition of The Precious One, and that quality is even more evident in the hands of a good narrator. Ms. de los Santos has given us another must-read novel, and I look forward to whatever she has next.
    • 5/5
      I absolutely loved this book! The story flowed so well, I didn't want to put it down. The characters were believable and likeable (or loved to hate, in the father's case). Look forward to ready more from this author.
    • 4/5
      Poignant tale of family ties and broken hearts and the ultimate road to acceptance and second chances. The protagonists, Taisy and Willow are sisters, a generation apart, that were separated by their egotistical and flawed father. Their alternating points of view reveal heartbreaking secrets and complex family dynamics. This intricately woven tale details the evolution of their relationship. A gem of a book with a satisfying conclusion.
    • 3/5
      I've read and enjoyed Marisa De los Santos' other books, but I had a hard time getting into this one. I found the characters Willow and Wilson incredibly annoying at the start of the novel. However, I was able to get into the story, and it got better. I would say it isn't as good as her other books, but still worth reading.
    • 4/5
      Many thanks to librarything.com for sending The Precious One, by Marisa De Los Santos, in return for an honest review.I love the way Marisa De Los Santos writes. There is an easiness to her writing and style without sacrificing depth of content. She has such a sense of her characters and develops them so fully that the reader becomes emotionally invested in them. Many of her characters are my long-time favorites like Cornelia Brown, Clare and Teo from Love Walked In and Belong to Me. I will be adding Willow, Taisy, Caro and Luka to that list of characters that have touched me.The novel is about a complicated family. There is a father, Wilson, who fractured his first family by not just having an affair but through his cruelty and neglect. It is one thing when a person does not seem to have the capacity to love, but this man was able to start again with his mistress and their child, Willow, as a much softer, gentler, kinder man, a much better version of himself. His eldest daughter Taisy is trying to reconcile the intense hatred her father continues to have for her and her twin brother and the devotion and genuine love for his daughter Willow. The relationships that developed between Willow and Taisy, Taisy and Caro and Willow and Luka were ones that could have gone on and on forever for this reader. I enjoyed them so much. I was less connected with the relationship between Taisy and Ben.But, this novel is not without its faults. By the end of the book you get a glimpse into Wilson and some reasons as to why he is the way he is, but there is no real satisfactory explanation as to his dismissal of one family while he exhibits such pure joy and acceptance for the other. There could never be a resolution, but a cathartic confrontation was warranted, in fact, needed. Perhaps, there are situations and actions in life that can never be explained. Recommended
    • 4/5
      An enjoyable quick read about a woman who goes to stay with her estranged father and his new wife and daughter. I really enjoyed reading about Taisy and her half sister, Willow, that she really had no previous connection to until her father called after a heart attack. I look forward to reading more books by Marisa De los Santos.
    • 3/5
      I have a lot of ambivalence about this book. I absolutely love Marisa de los Santos' prose. You never forget that she's also a poet. Her prose is rich and evocative. The characters in this particular book, though, just don't ring true, somehow. One of the main characters is a teenager who's been raised at home with no real social contact but her parents. Her father is a stuffed-shirt, pompous academician and sometimes she sounds way too much like her father for me to like or care about her. (It doesn't help that I work on a university campus with more pompous, stuffed-shirt academicians than I can shake a proverbial stick at.) The girl's emotional ups and downs left me grateful that I'm not a teenager anymore. The other main character is the father's other daughter, half-sister to the teenager. She evidently has a forgiving nature "above and beyond that of mortal man", apparently. I had a hard time believing that she could react the way she did. I don't want to spoil the plot for anyone, but I just didn't buy it. The characters weren't people I wanted to go on knowing after the book ended. When I love a book, I want to follow the characters around with dogged devotion and stay in their lives. I was happy to leave these people behind.
    • 4/5
      As Marisa de los Santos' The Precious One opens, Taisy Cleary receives a phone out of the blue from her estranged father Wilson, the man who left her mother, twin brother Marcus and her to marry a young sculptor. After not hearing from the man in ages, he calls her to inform her that he had a heart attack two weeks ago and summons her to his home to discuss an important matter.Marcus tells Taisy she is crazy to go see the man, but Taisy cannot say no. When she arrives, she finds that her father- a brilliant professor, inventor and self-made millionaire- wants her to help him write his memoir. Or rather, he will dictate it to Taisy and she can interview the many people who think he is brilliant too.Taisy says yes, even though she has to stay in the poolhouse. (You wouldn't expect her to be allowed to stay in her father's house with his wife and brilliant and beautiful golden child Willow, would you?)The only thing Willow knows about her half sister is that Taisy committed some horrible act when she was a teenager that made Wilson infuriated and lose all respect for her. Now Taisy is in their lives and Willow feels she must protect her father from her.The story is told from the alternating perspectives of Taisy and Willow. Taisy is curious about her father and his other family and slowly comes to care for Willow and her mother. Willow has been isolated from most other people, being homeschooled and smothered by her father's attention.As Taisy and Willow get to know each other, they come to understand and even like each other. Taisy helps Willow join the outside world, teaching her the things she needs to know.As I read this book, I felt like Taisy could be a character in an Adriana Trigiani novel. She is a hardworking woman with a good sense of humor, and an even more developed sense of right and wrong. There's even a crazy family dinner scene that reminded me of the Roncalli family ones from Trigiani's Valentine series.The ladies in the book club all agreed that we liked Taisy, she might even make a great addition to our book club. Her growing affection for Willow and Willow's mother was touching and sweet. One of our members has twins, so she especially enjoyed the relationship between Taisy and Marcus.We did not like Wilson, he was pompous and self-righteous, although Taisy's discovery of his past helped to mitigate that feeling somewhat (OK, just a little bit).This was the first book I have read of de los Santos, and I would like to read more of them. I like her style of writing, and the way she was able to write in the voices of two distinct characters.If you're looking for a good family story, The Precious One is an excellent choice.
    • 4/5
      We are all shaped by our families. We not only learn our traditions and histories from them but we internalize our own self worth from them. Certainly people can overcome what they've learned, but it isn't easy or smooth when something has been so ingrained for so long. In Marisa de los Santos' addicting newest novel, The Precious One, she captures the way in which family molds and shapes a person, for better or worse. Eustacia Cleary is 35 years old when she wakes up to a phone call from her father. This would not be remarkable except for the fact that the brilliant and cold Wilson Cleary left his family, Taisy, her twin brother Marcus, and their mother, for another woman 17 years prior and has had very little contact with his children ever since, all by his own choice. He's called to tell her he's had a heart attack and to ask her to move into his home with his artistic but seemingly spacey wife, Caro, their 16 year old daughter, Willow, and him so that Taisy can write his life story. Because Taisy makes her living as a very successful ghost writer. Although he couches it in non-emotional terms, Taisy can't resist him, the father whose withheld approval she's ached for her whole life. But if Wilson has his own reasons for wanting Taisy around, and Caro is perfectly accepting of her stepdaughter's presence, Willow, the doted on, adored, precious daughter, isn't so sure she wants to share her beloved father or the title of daughter. Her world has come crashing down on her since her father's heart attack. Homeschooled by Wilson using an incredibly reductive curriculum of his own design and isolated from other kids her age because of his belief that she is too smart and special for them, Willow is a strange mix of highly intelligent and socially innocent, something that doesn't serve her well when she is enrolled in a local private school while Wilson recuperates. On top of having to navigate the unfamiliar channels of school for the first time, she has to cope with her suspicion over Taisy's sudden and unwanted presence in her life, her fears that her father won't recover, and the fear that she could ever lose his love and approval, something that she is certain has happened to Taisy. This novel is really about Taisy and Willow coming together, to know each other and to learn what it means to be the others' sister. Each of them have experienced such different families because of Wilson's enormous difference within those families but they still have a lot to teach each other about learning to let go and be happy on their own terms. Even though Taisy has given up everything for her father, she must get past her craving for his approval or she will not be able to reclaim the love she once turned her back on for him. Taisy is an interesting character and her evolution from the young woman so hurt by her father's inexplicable outright rejection to a confident, determined woman who can defy his wishes and dig into his hidden past as a means to understand and forgive him in the present despite the years of happiness he's cost her is a slow and believable one. Willow's character is rather bratty but she's a threatened teenager even if she is certain of being loved. Her complete lack of street smarts and inability to sense danger is frustrating and her hostility to Taisy makes the reader want to shake her. But she's generally a believable, if appallingly naïve, sixteen year old under a lot of stress. The novel's narrative switches back and forth between first person accounts from Taisy and Willow so the reader is always certain where their respective mental states are. Their voices are incredibly different and easily distinguishable and the gradual change each undergoes, not only with regard to the other but also in terms of their views of the secondary characters, is well detailed. The secondary characters, including acerbic Marcus, flaky but perhaps ultimately triumphant Caro, wary Ben, intense and honest Luka, and flamboyant Trillium come across as charmingly quirky if not always fully developed. The writing is lovely and the emotion is true and deeply felt. This is a warm, touching, and insightful look at learning to live and love for yourself and to find the value in family, both the one you are born into and the one that you create around yourself.
    • 3/5
      This is my first book by this author. I had a hard time getting into the book mostly because of the teenage voice of Willow and the fact that the father, Wilson, was a thoroughly unlikeable character. But once the two sisters began interacting more I found it much more interesting. Overall, I enjoyed the story and will try another of her books.
    • 4/5
      Liked it, didn't love it. A lot of things rang true with me about step families. The father's back story just didn't seem plausible somehow. It would have almost been better to leave it a mystery why he was a nutcase.
    • 4/5
      The Precious One is a great book that really makes you think about the title. Usually when there are two narrators, I find myself liking one over the other, but not so with this book. I could relate the most to Taisy, and loved that she was trying to undercover the "mystery" that is her father, but Willow made this feel almost like a YA novel, which is my favorite genre. This combined so many elements that I love, that I could not help greatly enjoying reading this.
    • 5/5
      This is the kind of book that makes me wish I could stay curled up all day, just reading, reading and reading some more. I became sad as the pages I had left to read became fewer. I've had similar experiences reading the author's other books.) And though I've read many ARCs on my iPad, this was the first book that I actually purchased as an e-book (which I am personally against on principle because I love REAL books so much) because I just couldn't wait to read it and the library wait would've been too, too long.

      Long, detailed reviews are really not my forte, but I will tell you that this book made me stop and hold it to my chest several times, because the descriptions were so pleasing to me. The kind of sentences that make you just wish YOU could've been the one to put those feelings to words. And,....I adored the characters. Read it!