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emerald_moon's review against another edition
I DNF’d the book at about 1/3 of the way through because quite honestly…what the fuck??
I read this book as it was the month’s pick for a book club I am a part of. Initially I was intrigued because I thought the premise was interesting—a novel told by both POVs of a murder? Sounds good!
…That’s pretty much where it ended.
The story centers around Anna and Jack. Anna is a TV news reporter who has worked her way up to the top of the journalism latter, only to have her dream job taken away once the journalist who originally had Anna’s current job returns from maternity leave. Not wanting to return to her old, boring job, Anna takes the opportunity to return to her childhood hometown and report on an uncovering murder story. Jack is the detective in charge of the murder investigation.
Both Anna and Jack seem shells of people, effected by traumatic events that happened in their past. It is later revealed they have shared trauma in that once-upon-a-time they were married for 10 years and during that time, began falling out of love with one another but decided to have a child in hopes it would help to mend their relationship. Their daughter was both what brought their relationship back together and ended it as she died 3 months later and Anna and Jack split. When Anna returns to her hometown, she is reunited with Jack and all their old wounds begin to reopen.
More salt in only added to these wounds as the murder victim is discovered to be Anna’s childhood friend Rachel.
The novel flips between the current murder investigation and Anna’s childhood, uncovering the traumatic scars she tries to hide in the present. However, Anna isn’t the only one with secrets to hide. Jack was having an affair with Rachel and saw her right before she was murdered. He decides to hide is relationship from his peers, but this becomes increasingly hard because the murder victim is trying to frame Jack, leaving personal belongings of Rachel’s in his possession.
Throughout the book, the murderer’s POV is shared alongside Anna and Jack’s. The pieces of info they share points the blame on each character as to whom committed the crime, skewing the reader’s ability to truly determine who the murder might be.
I decided to DNF the book after the chapter that discussed what Rachel did to Catherine and then what Rachel did to Anna. It just all left me feeling utterly disgusted.
Prior to this point in the novel, I began losing interest in the story as the writing seemed to become more juvenile and began feeling as if it was the author’s debut novel. For example, Feeney incorporates intriguing quotes like “sometimes I think I am the unreliable narrator of my own life” and “anxiety often screams louder than logic, and when you spend too long imagining the worst, you can make it come true,” at first I thought quotes such as these to be poetic, but they began to feel repetitive and became a majority of the characters’ dialogues. I can see adding these unique thought processes to make the characters more appealing, however, their continued use created the exact opposite effect.
Touching on the characters themselves, I don’t think Feeney created any strong characters, especially Anna and Jack. I found them personally uninteresting. Yes, the mystery surrounding their pasts is intriguing, but that doesn’t make up for them in the present time. They just feel like chess pieces being moved around to solve a murder.
If you know me as a reader, you know I hate predictability, especially in genres like thrillers where I want to be kept guessing and this novel just let me down. It couldn’t have been made more obvious that Anna and Jack had been married so it wasn’t a big shock when they “dropped the bomb” about their relationship. And Catherine wanting to seek revenge? Yeah I could’ve guessed she would to the minute she was described as being bullied.
And now back to the spot that made me DNF the book: Rachel SA Anna. Why was this necessary??? This felt so forced, like Feeney added trauma just for the sake of having Anna go through a traumatic experience. Or should I say another traumatic experience? Adding this just felt so forced. This was the point I decided to look up some one star reviews to see if others shared my thoughts and I could have not stated it better than one reviewer who said “I don’t know how a book can feel like a cliché and also completely unbelievable at the same time?” As I stated before, the book began to lose its appeal the more I read. Thrillers can often be a genre that’s hard to write about just because the same plots get used over and over and if you are not a strong writer you ultimately will not be able to carry out one of these plots. The writing in this book slowly deteriorated making the story just feel more absurd as time went on.
Another reviewer made a good point in that Feeney is creating a poor image of queer women by insinuating that queer women “cannot have friends or meaningful relationships and that queer women are predators.” I think this is why the first scene in which Rachel commits SA was the icing on the cake for me because it felt like such a slap in the face as a queer woman.
After reading these reviews, I ultimately decided to just read a summary of the remainder of the book and I’m glad I did because what the fuck? Continual SA and a gang rape???????? I just have no words.
I refuse to read any other Alice Feeney novels.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Murder, Alcoholism, Bullying, Rape, Alcohol, Dementia, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Child abuse, Toxic relationship, Toxic friendship, and Lesbophobia
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