Grace Metalious sought to unearth the, "false fronts and bourgeois pretensions of allegedly respectable communities," according to Carlos Baker who reviewed Peyton Place back in 1956 when it was released. He named his review, "Small Town Peep Show," which is a pretty good description.

Metalious' book was as honest as a book gets.  It was a thinly disguised biography of her life as well as the members of her explosive town. It was like a soap opera in that each chapter focused on a different story in the small town of Peyton Place. It contained three books, each of which left you with a cliffhanger.

The most intriguing story is that of Selena Cross, daughter of shack owners Nellie and Lucas. Nellie worked as housekeeper for narrator Allison Mackenzie, and Lucas worked at Leslie Harrington's lumber mill. Lucas was a heavy drinker who liked to beat his wife and daughter, and sexually abuse the latter. Selena was a dark haired beauty that was in love with Ted Carter, the boy next door. His family disapproved of him dating a girl with such a horrid background.

Selena's best and only friend is Allison Mackenzie, daughter of Constance Mackenzie. Allison starts off as Britney Spears says, "Not a girl, not yet a woman," and ends an often sullen, but overall mature and successful woman. Constance is to everybody in Peyton Place a sad case. She had an affair with a married man, and when she returned to Peyton Place with Allison, she told everybody her husband had died, and the whole books deals with whether or not Allison will do the same thing. She lets Allison go on dates, but she's constantly worried something is going to happen.

With the book taking place between 1937-1940, things were very different than in our common world. Today women can get pregnant without being married and nobody would care, but in Peyton Place, you would be subjected to ridicule by everyone. They weren't susceptive to people of other races either as shown in the towns being named after an African-American. Everybody seemed ashamed of it. An example of unacceptable pregnancy in the book is that of teenage bombshell Betty Anderson who gets pregnant with Rod Harrington's child. Leslie, Rod's father is the richest man in town and pays Betty to abort her baby. Allison and her friend Kathy were discussing it, and Allison said, "Well, I certainly wouldn't want to be shipped off to Vermont to live with a maiden aunt while my baby was being born." That's what many unmarried women would do when they learned they were pregnant, and many times it went unnoticed as it was in the case of Constance Mackenzie.

The high point of the book is Metalious' often explosive and descriptive writing style. It was like I was there as you could see everything, and you always knew exactly what she meant. The most descriptive part of the book would be the rape of Selena Cross. This was also the most controversial part, which got the book banned from many libraries. They also sold it at a ridiculous price, but even that didn't keep the book from being one of the highest selling books of all time. The rape of Selena Cross was based on that of Jane Glenn, the author's local friend who was raped by her father. The one part in the book Grace never wanted to change was making Lucas Selena's stepfather. Later she confided in a friend, "They've ruined my book, now its trash rather than tragedy." I agree with her, but even with the change it was such a horrendous thing for such a young girl to go through you still feel her pain. Lucas was portrayed as the devil, and that's basically what he was.