I cannot tolerate most true crime, but I was drawn to this book because the author had a strong tie to the case, when she witnessed a man's execution I cannot tolerate most true crime, but I was drawn to this book because the author had a strong tie to the case, when she witnessed a man's execution as a young reporter and couldn't ever shake it. It's the first time in a long time I've read a book like this where someone gets stuck on a case and you understand completely why. It's an interesting memoir, and McGarrahan learns a lot, but it's not fully satisfying because the book is about McGarrahan's efforts to learn the truth about whether an innocent man was executed when that's not really the thing that's haunting her. What's haunting her is the death penalty itself, which is only a minor part of this book. So we can follow along with her quest but it was clear to me all along that she wouldn't find peace because this story was just the thing she could solve, it wasn't the real thing.
The last third is the best, the most comprehensive and the most chronological. Much of the rest of the book jumps around and I wasn't always clear exactly when things were happening. Because McGarrahan followed the case for decades, especially when the co-defendant in the case is let off of death row on appeal, there are all kinds of things that happen before the main investigation that makes up most of the book. I wanted it to be clearer, to have a more straightforward narrative. It's much better when it is and feels muddled in other sections.
One reason I don't read true crime much is that I have worked in criminal justice and usually things pile up that rub me wrong or get me frustrated. I hoped to have less of that in this book, and in a way there was. But there are things that McGarrahan is absolutely stuck on that an objective observer would be able to easily toss as unreliable or unimportant. One witness to the crime was a 9-year-old boy that she is talking to 4 decades later, that she wanted him to be a reliable witness surprised me, and that she scolded herself after interviewing him for not pressing him harder with crime scene photos shocked me. She knows he was a child, she knows after the crime he was held in detention for months, and that because of the crime he was effectively an orphan. She also cannot drop one statement one person wrote down that allegedly came from the child, but that no one else in the case has ever heard about. There are several things like this, things that she should know are unreliable, people who are clearly untrustworthy, but she continually berates herself for not pressing harder, convinced that she can get the truth from these sources like water from a stone. It's very frustrating to read because it was clear to me that there was no way to get the truth from many of these people, that it was something they didn't have or wouldn't give. But at least you understand why she is so determined.
In the end, McGarrahan may not have all the answers, but she does piece together a narrative of the crime that seems like the most likely one. She's also very effective at questioning the way we accept all kinds of narratives as truth, both to find people guilty and to believe their innocence. One of the stories is included in the popular play and film THE EXONERATED, and McGarrahan so effectively destroys that story so that not even a shred of it can be believed, that the playwrights should remove it and the play shouldn't be performed again, in my opinion. Even as someone who is against the death penalty, I can't support outright lies being presented in favor of the position. Another story is that of jewel thief Jack Murphy, who has become more of a celebrity than a criminal, with stories of his exploits conveniently leaving out a trail of murders and much more.
The crime at the center of the story is just one piece, the execution does not go well and is described in detail, there are several other crimes that become relevant and many of them are quite brutal, and include sexual assault....more
This is a quick read and it's just fine but I didn't love it.
I admit to being a curmudgeon, and so when a book like this is basically giving me, "AwwwThis is a quick read and it's just fine but I didn't love it.
I admit to being a curmudgeon, and so when a book like this is basically giving me, "Awww look at these adorable old people, they have personalities and are interesting!" I do not respond with, "Awww, how sweet." Instead I'm grumpy and say, "Yeah, obviously, they are people???" I definitely think we need more older protagonists but me and the tone of this book are not quite a fit.
Also me and the tone of this book are not quite a fit because it is like, "Oh, police work, sounds fun!" And I'm like "Noooooooooooooooo."
It should be 50 pages shorter (this is part of the this-book-thinks-it's-charming-and-I-don't-agree thing, it tends to go on when I found it completely unmerited) and even though it is appealing to old fashioned mystery readers it is not an old fashioned mystery in its structure, suspects, etc.
But even more than the other things I didn't like, I REALLY didn't like how so many of the old people in this book respond to problems with, "Well I'm old and here is a problem so I guess I'll kill myself now." Seriously, there is too much elder suicide in this book and it is all presented as "Ah well, I guess that's what happens," when I'M SORRY NO WTF?????
I fully expect that 90% of readers will not care about or probably even notice these things, but they hit me all really wrong. ...more
Don't be fooled by this cover and the blurbs by psychological thriller authors. This is a puzzle mystery, even though it has been packaged like a buy-Don't be fooled by this cover and the blurbs by psychological thriller authors. This is a puzzle mystery, even though it has been packaged like a buy-at-the-airport thriller. It's a good fit for folks who love old-fashioned mystery stories with intricate solutions.
Like some other books I've read this year (THE DECAGON HOUSE MURDERS) this is a mystery-lover's mystery. It is all about the permutations of the mystery novel, how to play with the elements of it and change them around. It definitely gets into the nitty gritty, it reminded me of the old Ellery Queen mysteries I used to read where the entire solution came down to one word or phrase that I had skimmed right past. But it's bigger than that, too. It's playing on multiple levels, and its unusual structure means it's easy to pick up and put down to read one section at a time.
I don't want to say much more about it, because of its unusual structure even attempting to give a summary spoils some of the joy of the early discoveries you get while reading it. So go into it cold, and if you're a puzzle mystery fan I am pretty confident you'll enjoy it....more
The descriptions of this (for example, Little Fires Everywhere + Shirley Jackson) are not entirely wrong but this is more than just a book of slowly bThe descriptions of this (for example, Little Fires Everywhere + Shirley Jackson) are not entirely wrong but this is more than just a book of slowly building dread and I don't really like the Jackson comp. (I don't like most Jackson comps, these days, they usually just mean something horror adjacent written by a woman.) This is like if you took one of these suburban thrillers and dialed everything up about 5 notches. There is a distinct air of hyperreality to it, like a picture where the color has been over-brightened. I've included a "Speculative" tag, too, since its near future setting of 2027 relies on a feeling of near-collapse in social structures and the climate crisis.
By the time I was about 2/3 of the way through this book I couldn't figure out how it was going to make all this work. It's biggest gimmicks are its biggest weakness, in my opinion, the fragments of articles and books written years later about these events serve to make it clear just how climactic the big climax is going to be, with several deaths that will take place, though the excerpts are too vague to make it clear exactly what and how it will all go down except that it will implicate the entire street. But, as is often the case in these thrillers, the actual climax is quite different than what those clips led you to expect and ultimately I found them to hurt the book instead of helping to grow tension. I think I would have liked it a lot better without them. (Especially because the most noteworthy one at the beginning, which says the case has become such an icon of pop culture that an audience-participation Broadway show grew up around it just doesn't fit at all with how things end up going, it kept distracting me and pulling me out of the story.) Without all those additional tidbits, I like the book more. There's less of these external bits telling us how big and shocking the book is, I tend to like it better when the book tells us itself.
As it is, the story itself is a bit at war with your expectations for it. It keeps raising those expectations every few chapters, until you wonder what on earth can possibly still happen. The climax, when it arrives, is both unexpected and obvious, which would normally be a perfect climax, except that because it's unexpected you feel a little tricked from all those articles and writings about what happened. Without that, it's actually quite beautifully done.
As for how we get there, this is not quite reality. And there is not a lot of subtlety. In the very first chapter we get a massive sinkhole in the park, and the sand and tar that bubble out of the ground throughout the neighborhood in the weeks that follow hits a bit too heavy as a metaphor. So does the constantly 100-degree heat, which is referred to constantly but I didn't see much by way of people actually cooling off, even when the power went out and they all lost their a/c. I often found myself skimming past these, trying to get back to the actual plot.
At the very bottom of it all are some rather moving stories about some very messed up people. The family at the center, the Wildes, are unusual mostly because they've had to grow up around and in response to the deep traumatic histories of the two parents. Compare that to the Schroeders next store, the primary force moving against the Wildes, and they make good opposites. The Schroeders look perfect while the Wildes are always not-fully-finished, but the Schroeders have so much unexpressed sorrow and rage that it's clear they could explode at any moment. The book is at its best when we get to dive into these similarities and differences, where sometimes it seems like there's a whole alternate reality where Gertie Wilde gets through to Rhea Schroeder and everyone comes out of it better.
The two other major pieces of the book are the children and the neighbors. The children's plot is part of why I call this hyperreality, because outside of one major scene, nothing here is consistent with how children speak or behave. They are supposed to stand in contrast to their parents, trying to put out the fire instead of throwing a few more logs on, but this doesn't quite work either. The other adults in the neighborhood we see only occasionally, usually from a distance, and while the book wants us to look at this issue of how the whole street came together in violence and rage, it doesn't dive very deeply into this hysteria. The thought of living on a street where literally all your neighbors hate you is horrifying, and there is one scene in particular, only about 40% of the way into the book that is to me the worst of them all, but it is just another step to the book. I don't think we get to sit long enough with the horrifying stuff, and we spend far too much time with the Wildes for it to be a book about the way everyone turns against them, though clearly that is what it wants to be. It's a bit of a muddle.
All that said, this is not just a "dark" book. I like dark, and there were times when I had to put this one down and take a break. I think, like many a suburban thriller, it would be better if it wasn't pushing so hard to be shocking and let itself just live a little more in the stories at the center. ...more
This started off okay, I am very sympathetic to a woman whose marriage has basically destroyed her life. But from the beginning the difference betweenThis started off okay, I am very sympathetic to a woman whose marriage has basically destroyed her life. But from the beginning the difference between pre-marriage and post-marriage Faye made her basically unrecognizable. I had a hard time believing she would be that far gone in just a few years.
After that it got even clunkier. Faye has no obstacles. Once she decides she will exact a very elaborate revenge, she just... does. No suspense, totally unnecessary flashbacks that add nothing to the plot. Läckberg can't seem to decide if Faye is a likable protagonist or not, the characterization is all over the place.
Had hoped this would be a Thriller-About-Horrible-Rich-People but really it wasn't thrilling at all. There's not much to it. ...more
I have been in a reading slump for a few weeks and the only ways I can get through it are books that are reliable pageturners. Mostly this has meant rI have been in a reading slump for a few weeks and the only ways I can get through it are books that are reliable pageturners. Mostly this has meant re-reading, but it seems I can also get through books that I haven't read before if they are generally accepted to be reliable pageturners. And that is why I've spent the last day or so deep in Ira Levin.
I came to this knowing nothing about it except that it somehow involved Nazis in hiding after WWII. It's high-concept, which is clearly Levin's thing, but he's quite good at giving us an awfully long time to pick at the mystery of what is going on. (His reveal is about 20 pages too late for my liking, but it was a different time with different reader expectations so I'm probably being too harsh.) What I was most impressed by wasn't the high concept, it was how effectively Levin plays this long cat-mouse-type game where the cat and the mouse are both hunting each other. It's hard to draw that out and he does a good job of shuffling up the stakes, keeping it moving, not getting stuck in a rut. It's quite impressive, and while I personally am kind of eye-roll-y about the big concept itself, I was pleased that he doesn't spend too much time hammering it in over and over again in the final pages.
It's too bad he didn't write more, but if you're this committed to the high concept, you do create a pretty big ask for yourself. This wasn't my first go-round with Levin, I read SLIVER back in the 90's when I was too young for it but old enough to know it wasn't good. And it's easy to see why he's so often adapted, his stories move move move....more
What a great suspense novel, such a smart plot and structure, a real classic of the genre. There are some tricks you can only pull off once or twice aWhat a great suspense novel, such a smart plot and structure, a real classic of the genre. There are some tricks you can only pull off once or twice and it's been a while since I came across one, so it was a real delight to get it here.
Each of the three parts of this book is quite different, in that way it reminds me of our more recent domestic thrillers that require a few high stakes reveals before the end of the story. The only real quibble I have is that the third is the weakest of them. It's not weak, just weaker, but after you've run your reader through some twists you don't want to wear them out, so I suppose I'd take this kind of ending over another set of twists.
Apparently there is a movie of this (two, even!), but I'd read the book. The movie can't possibly replicate the fun of the second part of the story, it's something you can only really do with words and I can't imagine a film would pull it off as effectively. Though if I'm wrong about the movie I'd be curious to know how they managed it. ...more
This is one of those books where so many bad things happen to the protagonist that it can make you want to throw the book across the room. The only coThis is one of those books where so many bad things happen to the protagonist that it can make you want to throw the book across the room. The only comfort is that the protagonist is so good and the villains are so bad that you know it will be right in the end. Still, it is a while to get there.
This is a throwback and the oversimplicity, I would imagine, is part of the whole package. The gore and murder is bad enough to put it not just in crime but horror, especially since there is a bit of the supernatural in Katie's psychic abilities. This is in the penny dreadful style, though I do wish McDowell had fleshed out his characters just a bit and done more to modernize the style. Philo is just so good that her only characteristic is goodness and it would be nice to see more of a person in her. Likewise the Slapes are so very bad, and Katie worst of all, that they don't ever feel real.
There is lots and lots of violence, and it doesn't go well for more than one dog.
I did the audiobook, I had noted to Valancourt that I love that they put many of these old horror novels on audio but that I get frustrated by their choice of reader. It is always the same kind of reader: male, husky-voiced, always making everything sound dark and dangerous. This doesn't always befit the book (BURNT OFFERINGS, for example, which I read recently would have been better with a woman reading it, in my opinion) and they suggested this as an audiobook with a different kind of reader. They were right, it's quite different, and I mostly found the writer suited the material, I just didn't love her voices, they didn't feel period-appropriate.
I was provided with a complimentary copy of the audiobook....more
This book is in the middle between a more character-driven crime novel and a plot-plot-plot mystery. This can be a real sweet spot for me, since I tenThis book is in the middle between a more character-driven crime novel and a plot-plot-plot mystery. This can be a real sweet spot for me, since I tend to want both. But this one didn't deliver as I'd hoped.
The character side of it stays too on the surface to satisfy me, especially when it creates so much potential to dive into. I think it suffers from moving between too many characters rather than focusing on one. Even our protagonist, Kim, doesn't spend all that much time grappling with the idea that she was kidnapped as a child. She spends much more time trying to figure out what happened than trying to deal with the emotional implications.
On the plot side, this was a pile of tropes and not many surprises. When a snakehandling Kentucky church appeared I knew there was potential for it to get heavyhanded, and it sure did. (This is where it becomes most clear that the author is Australian, the small-town Kentucky he creates never feels real. Like when the Black Sheriff is surprised when a white woman whose son he arrested calls him the n-word. Or the family where the fundamentalist mom seems to not care that none of her children go to church. It's a very fictional Kentucky.) Once the full story came out, I wasn't particularly satisfied and a lot of the story made even less sense in retrospect.
I think White has potential, but I'd like to see him write something closer to home.
I did the audiobook, which was fine, though they definitely should have brought in a second reader with a Kentucky accent. It was always a little off to have the Kentucky sections read by an Australian....more
3.5 stars. This isn't my favorite thriller of the year, but it definitely stands out from the Domestic Thriller pack that continue to be churned out s3.5 stars. This isn't my favorite thriller of the year, but it definitely stands out from the Domestic Thriller pack that continue to be churned out so consistently. I tend to have such low expectations for the subgenre now that I may be a bit more bright eyed than is merited, but I think it's important to pull out the solid titles when even that feels like a needle in a haystack.
It takes a while for it to get going, and it seems pretty standard for quite some time. But I realized it could be actually different in one very specific spot. Our protagonist, Lizzie, a former AUSA prosecutor who's been cajoled into taking on a criminal defense case of an old friend needs to track down the Public Defender who handled the bail hearing. She pictures him the way everyone does in this kind of book, overworked and incompetent, wholly inadequate and ready to be replaced. Instead, what she finds is a hyper-competent man who may be exhausted but clearly did better in the hearing than Lizzie herself would have. I was surprised. The "oh the public defender did a bad job and now you're in even worse shape" plot is so common, it's usually the only reason one gets included in a story like this. I realized this book may be a little more than I thought it was.
And, indeed, this book absolutely pandered to me personally. Have I mentioned I used to be a Public Defender myself? It is hard to read courtroom dramas when you know how courtrooms work, especially since many of them glorify prosecutors and law enforcement, when my experience is very much the opposite of what I see in books. But here... well, this book shows us Lizzie, a former prosecutor, who understands exactly how prosecutors work the system, realizing over and over again that the system is unfair, actually. And that prosecutors have the power to manipulate investigations and trials not in pursuit of getting the right outcome but getting the outcome they want. And yes, I am a very warm audience for this message. I am not going to say this is all accurate lawyer stuff, but it doesn't cut any more corners than you see elsewhere. Lizzie's work on the murder case is all pretty accurate, it's the picture of her being able to devote all her time to this (without a retainer!!!) and without spending any time on other cases as an associate at a fancy firm that is the most suspect but without that, no book.
McCreight is also pretty smart with her themes. If the title didn't clue you in, that theme is marriage. My only real issue with the theme is that the two primary marriages here are the least interesting. We know from basically the beginning that Amanda and Zach have a marriage of convenience. And we see so little of Lizzie and Sam's marriage outside of Lizzie stressing about it that it's hard to get invested. But the marriages of Amanda's two friends, Sarah and Maud, are pretty interesting and much more fun to explore.
Now I am not going to tell you that this is a Domestic Thriller where the twists are not ridiculous. Because they are. There are at least 4 coincidences too many and I don't think the book really needed it but even if they're ridiculous, they are surprising and the reveals are very well timed. The parallel plots that move forward and backward in time with Lizzie and Amanda help to build the suspense and flesh things out well. The last third of the book is extremely pageturny.
I did the audiobook and don't particularly recommend. I didn't like either reader, and I couldn't stand the one who did Amanda, she made all the women sound weirdly vapid....more
I have complained a bit the last few years about Highsmith-ian novels that are just such straight-up ripoffs that they feel tired instead of exciting.I have complained a bit the last few years about Highsmith-ian novels that are just such straight-up ripoffs that they feel tired instead of exciting. I love Highsmith and I am here for Highsmith-ian twisty books but I also want a book to stand very firmly on its own two feet. This book does that quite well. It is hard to describe because it is not one thing, but keeps shifting into different things, and that is one of its real joys and what keeps it nimble and not another retread.
At the beginning, we start in a subgenre I have seen more than a few times, the Insider Publishing novel. And yes, everyone in it sucks and they are all awful. (I am sure these people exist, like beyond sure, but I consider myself lucky that all my friends in publishing have been lovely and nowhere near this horrible.) Florence is our outsider, she doesn't have that perfect pedigree of prep school and Ivy League degree. She grew up in Florida and went to UF-Gainesville, and while she's always dreamed of being a writer and living in New York, so far she hates it. It starts to go off the rails for Florence--it will more than once--but somehow a last minute opportunity materializes to save the day.
It is an opportunity involving a massively popular anonymous author. Think Ferrante but small-town Mississippi instead of Naples. The author's identity is a matter of much speculation. It's the exact kind of critical and cultural darling that Florence wants for herself, so of course she says yes.
Florence is not supposed to be likable, it's clear from the beginning. And she isn't a particularly unique character, you have seen many like her before. What's so delicious is getting to watch as Andrews slowly tips her further and further. She is not constantly doing terrible things, she does an awful lot of things she is supposed to do and every now and then she cuts a corner and many of those corners anyone would cut and what's a few more while we're already here? It is going to get much bigger, and because you are smarter than Florence and not working so hard to juggle all of this, you will probably see the last few twists coming. I did, but honestly, it didn't ruin anything for me. Because the twists presented Florence with a new situation and I wanted to see what she would do next. I wanted to figure out if she would break.
Again, I do not want to dive into too much detail here to let you enter it as unspoiled as possible, but we do get to see Florence go toe to toe with a strong female foil and it was an awful lot of fun. And yes, by halfway through the book I was thinking to myself, "Oh I see, so this is another Highsmith book," I was already having such a nice time that I didn't mind at all. It is very witty, a cunning shapeshifter, you feel like one of those detectives in a movie who really respects the jewel robber she's chasing. I read it in a single morning.
Just want to state for the record, this is a terrible title and a terrible cover. Neither fits the book at all. ...more
3.5 stars rounded up. Will give you your Cult Book fix with a few new twists but doesn't reinvent the wheel. This is basically a twisty crime novel wh3.5 stars rounded up. Will give you your Cult Book fix with a few new twists but doesn't reinvent the wheel. This is basically a twisty crime novel where you don't know yet what the crime is. You feel pretty sure from the beginning that The Unity Project is a creepy cult and that it is up to no good but you don't know the details. Neither does Lo, our protagonist for most of the book, whose sister left for The Project years ago and hasn't been heard from since.
The backstory is filled in for us in one of our two parallel plots, flashing back to Bea a few years earlier, right after a car accident killed both their parents and left Lo bedridden for years. I love the parallel structure, getting to see Bea drawn in deeper just as Lo follows in her footsteps. There's also a great double theme where Lev, the creepy prophet, and his relationship with Bea is drawn right next to Lo's relationship with her boss, though it doesn't hit you too hard over the head with it.
Summers is very good at keeping the story about these two sisters, how they both feel the other has pulled away, how they are not sure how to find their way back to each other. And Lev, both up close and far away, is very well-drawn, for the most part you get how he appeals to Bea and how he's made a splash.
I have some quibbles. Are there more than 4 people in this cult? Because despite much of the action taking place at this big lodge full of dozens of full-time staff and all these facilities they run, we almost never see anyone except the same small handful of characters. It feels more like how one person seduced Bea than how a group did it. I'm not sure how Lo came through this horrific accident that had her hospitalized for months with just a scar and no other physical signs. We jump into Bea already being in The Project and we never see how she gets into it. And while we get to see how they appeal to Lo as she becomes more intwined with them, the transition from Lo being against them to starting to see their side felt jarring to me. How come Lo almost never goes to work? I wish I was the kind of reader who didn't get stuck in these things but I 1000% am.
I read this very quickly, it's twisty enough to draw you in and keep you turning pages....more
This was fine. Too many parts of this plot made no sense. There were so many ways this book could have been more interesting but instead it got less iThis was fine. Too many parts of this plot made no sense. There were so many ways this book could have been more interesting but instead it got less interesting as it passed. ...more
At the beginning of this book I thought it might be the one, the Sarah Gailey book that I really like. I have tried to read all of their books and I aAt the beginning of this book I thought it might be the one, the Sarah Gailey book that I really like. I have tried to read all of their books and I always want to like them, but it never quite goes as well as I hope it will. There is a lot I like about this one, I like Gailey's choice to give us this chilly protagonist a lot, but ultimately I got weighed down by too many things to make it The One.
This is a book where you have to Just Accept the Science. And this would be easier if our protagonist was not a scientist. When it's fuzzy and behind the scenes and we're not in the actual lab talking about the actual process, this is much easier. I did okay at first but the longer it went on the more questions I had and the more I had to work to stop myself from asking them.
The Asking Questions problem would be less of an issue if this book didn't have plot holes so large you could easily steer a cruise ship through them. It's also a little lazy with its themes, there is a lot to dive into here, and yet the book will often glance at a moral quandary, notice it, and then just move along.
All that said, I stuck with it because it was quite clear from the beginning that this book is unpredictable and I couldn't be sure where it was going next. And that is something that I need right now, so I stuck with it. I am not sure the world Gailey has created here actually makes sense, it feels like it's in service to these specific plot twists rather than something to grow out of....more
If you are one of those people who doesn't read YA crime fiction, first of all you should sit with that for a while. Second of all, if you need to seeIf you are one of those people who doesn't read YA crime fiction, first of all you should sit with that for a while. Second of all, if you need to see just how great the genre can be, this is a great place to start. If you have been reading YA crime, know that this is more like the heavy books of Tiffany D. Jackson than some of the lighter entries in the genre.
I was willing to start out accepting the premise, that our protagonist Nora is caught in a bank heist and that she is also a practiced con artist. It started off rather bouncy and I was willing to go along for the ride. But by the end, this was as deep a consideration of trauma as any adult crime novel (more than most!) and really, it's just YA because we are spending time with teenagers and there is YA-ish friendship and love drama. (Although, again, I'd argue that adult crime novels are pretty bad at friendship and love drama, so this may even be better.) I, for one, would happily see more love interests with perfect vintage dresses and poofy crinolines, and former-love-interests-now-best-friends in my serious adult crime fiction, thank you.
If at first you have to suspend some disbelief to believe that a 17-year-old could be a con artist, you don't have to suspend it for long. Along with taking us through the bank robbery minute by minute, Nora also takes us through her history, the different girls she's been in her mother's long grifts. As time passes, the circumstances of the robbery get more complicated and the story of Nora's history gets darker. By the end, you believe in her ability to do just about anything, it's impressive work by Sharpe. We also get a real and involving emotional journey as Nora confronts serious danger to herself and those she loves, and is able to channel the survival skills from her previous lives to finally go to something good.
Solid ending, though it does leave you hankering for a sequel. I would certainly not be opposed. Also more casually bisexual characters. Here we had three queer women included in our central characters, and while one is closeted, there's not a lot of emphasis on queer suffering here.
I did the audiobook, read by the author, and she's fantastic.
Some pretty serious content warnings, including physical and sexual abuse of a child, though it's generally not on the page, there's enough detail to be difficult for readers that have those particular triggers....more
3.5 stars. I feel very silly saying this, but why did this book have to go and get a plot? I was enjoying myself so very much for the first hundred pa3.5 stars. I feel very silly saying this, but why did this book have to go and get a plot? I was enjoying myself so very much for the first hundred pages or so, even though they are all setup. Because it was nice spending time with these characters when stressful things are not constantly happening. The plot here just didn't do much for me, except to distract from the other things that I liked, and yes I know how strange it is for me, a plot person, to be saying this.
If you, like me, went to a region- or state-wide music thing where you were put up in a hotel with other teens and made the best music of your life, there is some very hard nostalgia here. (I went more than twice as only the most obnoxious people do, as the book extremely correctly notes, so clearly this hit me right in the gut.) Before the plot starts barging in, there is so much here that I related to and fell for about the way music can be such a huge part of your life as a teen in a way that it's extremely unlikely it will be as an adult. I feel those feels. The book is extremely shameless about it, even if it spends a bit too much time focusing on the "prodigies" instead of the above average music lovers like Alice and Rabbit.
I, a person who enjoys mysteries and horror, could have done entirely without the murder and missing people stuff. I would have been even happier if the book had been just the two very wholesome teen twins, and had no sociopathic evil mother/administrator at all. Some villains are just too villain-y to really work and this was one of them.
If it had just had less plot I would have liked it more than TUESDAY MOONEY, where I did not mind the plot nearly so much, though it still had a bit too much of it. I would love to see Racculia just living in her characters more because I am just so charmed by them and by her voice that that is the real feature....more
2.5 stars. This is a dreamy crime novel that never quite makes up its mind about what it is.
We often find ourselves floating above the action, at a k2.5 stars. This is a dreamy crime novel that never quite makes up its mind about what it is.
We often find ourselves floating above the action, at a kind of remove. Most of the characters and setting feel vague and foggy. Then there will be scenes given with up close detail and it is almost like you're back in the real world, but it never lasts, and soon we're floating away again. For this book to work, you have to be okay with how nothing in it really makes any sense at all and treat it almost more as surrealism than realism. (Just for starters, our protagonist's obsession is with a podcast that says it is about unsolved cases but all the excerpts of it lay out exactly what happened and sure seem to know exactly who's responsible, nothing about it seems like a real true crime podcast, but like I said, nothing here seems grounded in reality.)
The dreaminess of it would have been okay with me if we'd stuck with it but the end switches tone entirely and while things become even more unbelievable, we are no longer watching everything from far away but up close. Maybe that works for some people, it certainly understands that it is in a climax that it wants to move very quickly. But it just made everything feel more disjointed for me.
The themes here are also not all the way clear sometimes while lacking all nuance at other times. Women are in some kind of vague danger, I guess? Women are either too much or they disappear, we are told at one point, which sounds nice but doesn't actually fit with the narrative or mean much of anything. Our narrator exists only to have an obsession, she lacks any other desires and the rest of her life is just a brief biography. It is sometimes more like a faraway allegory but then it's a thriller again. I am not opposed to books that change things up, that try to be different, but at the end of it all there didn't seem to be much there there and the moodiness of it never really worked for me....more
I knew this book would be stressful as hell and it was. For so much of it you can't quite tell what is malevolent and what is ignorant, and Cole uses I knew this book would be stressful as hell and it was. For so much of it you can't quite tell what is malevolent and what is ignorant, and Cole uses that in very smart ways.
The only quibble I have is that there is never a question of what the bad guy is. We always know exactly what it is from the first page, even if we aren't sure what they're doing purposefully and what is just the awful world we live in. Of course, if the evil is gentrification, the source behind it is well-off white people. We already know them, their motives, their goals, so there isn't much mystery there. What this means structurally is that the third act is less exciting than the first two, but this is a problem with most thrillers anyway so it really is just a quibble and not a real problem.
Everything before that is so sly and slippery, the kind of thing where neither the protagonist nor the reader knows exactly what is going on and why, it's rare to run into that. And we still get a few strong reveals. Social media has been used in a lot of books as a kind of punctuation or plot point, but this is the best I've ever seen anyone use it. The neighborhood app Cole invents feels absolutely real, whereas social media usually feels flat and fake.
Doing the audiobook made it more stressful, as it generally does. I liked both readers, but Susan Dalian's Sydney was particularly good. The male reader had a little of that high pitched female voice thing that I get irked by....more
2.5 stars. Let us start by saying I am often a grouch about retellings. I generally avoid them and maybe I should have avoided this one. But I am intr2.5 stars. Let us start by saying I am often a grouch about retellings. I generally avoid them and maybe I should have avoided this one. But I am intrigued by retellings that play with genre or really want to make you look at the narrative in a new way. Jane Eyre has been flipped around and reexamined any number of times (one of the few where one of those reexaminations is considered superior to the original!) and I was intrigued by the domestic thriller angle. Unfortunately, to me, this is everything that is wrong with retellings and very little that's right.
Go to close to the story, it's boring and a retread. Get too far away and you can lose sight of everything that made the concept interesting. This one somehow does both and neither one in a good way. The concept sounds okay, Jane is a lost soul from a tough background who just wants to start over and claw her way to something like stability. Rochester (Eddie, here) is... well nothing like Rochester in that he is a nonstop charm machine with immediate designs on Jane. He has basically nothing to do with the original Rochester, which could be a good thing, but really he's just a plot device masquerading as a character. Nothing he does in the entire book makes any damn sense except as it serves to move the plot forward. And then we have the titular wife, who you already know about from the title if nothing else.
The things that drew me in here were the promises of twists and a Southern gothic setting. The "twists" are not what I'd call twists. The big one was obvious to me from the beginning from the book and the handful of other reveals are the kind that are too common in this kind of book, where after all the buildup it's actually not really that big a thing. And if you are familiar with the source material, the twists tend to lean into it rather than go for new ground, so it makes it much more likely that you'll have a similar experience to me and not be surprised by a single thing here except how dumb some of the characters are. As for the Southern gothic, there is nothing remotely resembling gothic here, and the "Southern" rarely goes beyond references to brands like Lilly Pulitzer. Our setting is a fancy suburb of mansions outside of Birmingham, but the women in it are just boring rich women, just with more gingham. So I didn't get anything I wanted, the retelling elements were a dud.
In normal times I probably wouldn't have finished this, I may not have even picked it up, but here we are....more
A very very different Higashino than usual. Though you have the meticulous plot full of twists and turns, everything else feels like a different writeA very very different Higashino than usual. Though you have the meticulous plot full of twists and turns, everything else feels like a different writer all together.
The biggest obstacle for Higashino fans is likely our narrator, who is a total jerk. The unlikable female narrator is something we've talked about a lot in the last decade or so, but the unlikable male narrator is another thing all together. This guy sucks and he sucks enough that you can tell there is no way that he is going to be redeemed or see the error of his ways by the end of the book. So you have to know you're going in to a book where this guy is going to be sizing up women and playing stupid games of masculinity with men and that is just the thing.
All that said, it is a unique mystery and one that mostly works because our guy sucks so much. A good person would not do the stuff he does. So I see what Higashino is doing here and it mostly works. I didn't get to revel in it as much as I do with his best stuff, but he's always interesting and even if you have some suspicions that there's more here than meets the eye, the twists are legitimately surprising. The pacing is the biggest flaw, it's a very short third act with most of the twists all packed in together. But I admit, I was so pleased to find a Higashino that I was willing to forgive a multitude of sins. ...more
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