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A review by jenbebookish
Our Little Secret by Roz Nay
3.0
This was an audio book for me. Wow, late to jump on the audio book bandwagon, I know. Until very recently it was a books only kinda life for me. They will forever and always be my preference but the thing about books is that you can't read while you're driving, walking the dog, etc. But I CAN listen to things, so with a TBR that is a little short of 1K, I decided that I should utilize my in-the-car-dog-walking-gym-time with a little audible action. And so far...so good. 1st thing I have to make note of that I'm sure is a common audio-book issue that everybody already knows & accepts, is how significant & pivotal the voices doing the reading are. Naturally, some people's voices will just grate on our nerves, others we will love, others will put us to sleep, & so on & so on. So far I have yet to encounter a reading that I could not tolerate, but the girl reading Our Little Secret had a strange monotone. I kept thinking I had it on slow mo or something, but finally accepted that it's just the way she's reading it. Then I found all the different voices she did for all the different characters to be rather...odd. She wasn't my favorite, lets just say that, but even so I found myself invested in the story before long.
Basically as the story opens we are sitting in a police interrogation room with Angela Pettijean. (interesting thing about audio books is that I never actually saw the words, so spelling of names is a guess) She is talking to the officers, noting casually the habits of the officers, their methods, the trade off between younger cop & older, more experienced cop. She seems to be a suspect for something, but her attitude towards this is bored, slightly incredulous, a bit annoyed. When Officer Novak sits down, for whatever reason Angela takes to him more than the others. He starts in on his line of questioning, does Angela know what happened to Saskia? Where is Saskia? Does Angela hate Saskia? We as the reader have no idea at this point who Saskia is, or really Angela either. They're both strangers to us, but here Angela starts in on her story. In response to his questions, Angela agrees to tell him things. But, she interjects, she's going to tell him her way. She's going to go back & tell the whole story, the part of story that matters to her, & he pretty much is just going to have to listen if he wants to know anything about Saskia, or about Angela's relationship with Saskia. Novak agrees. Angela begins.
And so that's how the story is set up, as Angela in an interrogation room telling Detective Novak a story. And in that way, the actual meat of this story unfolds, & that's really the love story between Angela & her first & true love, HP. Only in that story, she's LJ, for Little John. The name HP gives her. Angela is nothing but a loner in her teen years until HP sorta picks her up as his bff. Initially they are just friends, with Angela obviously adoring him consistently since first meeting all the while HP circulates through all the willing females in the area. We get the sense he's a sort of player. The sort of tortured soul, an I'm-only-16-years-old-yet-I-imagine-that-I-carry-all-the-wisdom-&-tragedy-of-a-man-much-older-than-myself-&-because-I'm-a-teenager-I-think-I'm-just-so-smart-and-philosophical-&-coooool. But, all the girls want him and so does Angela, & when after a school camping trip & a couple years of LJ hanging around like a sad puppy dog waiting around for scraps, they finally do the deed & not only sleep together, but begin a relationship, Angela is in heaven. He is her everything and the two of them carry on in the manner of all self absorbed teens (and people, really) feeling giddy & happy & just oh-so-superior. Everything is just fine & dandy, tho the big bad college departure looms in the distance. Angela has zero interest in college or continuing any kind of life without HP, but her parents are both heavily invested in her life, & when her Dad pulls strings to get her into some program at Oxford, Angela agrees, disinclined to let her Dad down. But rather than divulge this piece of info to HP she lets the knowledge sit. Finally, when there's only about a week left before her embarkment across the pond, the info comes out via other means and HP is naturally and understandably both surprised and upset. Why would she keep that important piece of info from him? He feels deceived, but being cool-Joe-Schmoe, he takes it all in stride, with only a dig or two at Angela serving as any evidence at all that he even cares. They determine, in the manner of probably billions of teens before them, that they will try to maintain their connection but yet without any expectations or obligations. Let's just see how it goes kind of thing. Vague. Suspicious. Of course. But we've all been there, done that am I right? Who of us hasn't been in that sort of situation? Breeding ground for suspicion & insecurity if you ask me, but hey. We all of us were young once, we all have egos & pride & fear & insecurities up the wazoo. Angela says nothing, & the year goes by that way. Angela befriends a rich English upperclassmen named Freddy, & it's not till the year has nearly ended that HP shows up with his best friend Ezra at Oxford. They pick up where they left off, both of them admitting that there had not been anybody else, & everything seems peachy keen till the night of "the ball."
A big night, a sort of prom, but for university kids at Oxford. Angela has transformed her tomboy look into tomboy-sexy-chic, with an oversized white mans shirt tailored to fit, loose tie, knee high boots with 4 inch heel. HP is looking glam in a tux. It's like Cinderella, and Angela's depiction of the night is sheer perfection. They are still so in love, their "unique" connection intact, their chemistry sizzling & on high. The only snag on an otherwise perfect time is when HP meets Freddy. Of course, the typical jealousies are crackling in the air but they're mostly left unspoken. And anyway, Angela immediately insists that they're just friends. All seems well. But, in a storyline that is probably familiar to so many of us, a bar happens. College-aged kids are young, hot & horny. Everybody is in their prime of youth, love feelings are flying around, jealousy & possessiveness & lust, insecurities exacerbated & compounded by 1st time experiences.
Enter Saskia. Australian. Tanned, blonde, & freckled. I think if I had only read the words written about her I would have viewed her entirely different, probably as a blonde goddess from down under but with the audio & the strange, overly energetic, too-sugary-sweet australian accent that the reader uses, she's made out to be rather ridiculous.
What follows is the typical storyline that is so familiar that it's almost comedic. HP is talking to Saskia. Angela watches and gets jealous. They get separated. Angela assumes HP is hooking up with new girl Saskia, so she runs off looking for Freddy. She hooks up with Freddy a little bit. Then appears HP, only he wasn't hooking up with Saskia. But now what's done is done, & alas. Things are f'd up. HP calls Angela out for having shady friendships which feels unjust to Angela but after watching her just manipulate Freddy completely, I really have no sympathy for her. HP is right on the money. He leaves, & their relationship for the time being, is done.
Now and then we are brought back to the interrogation room which is easy to forget is really the present. Somewhere along the lines, I think starting right about at this point in the story we start to sense that Angela may not be the most reliable narrator, but we aren't sure yet. She started off sounding normal, but slowly but surely crazy person vibes begin to radiate from her. Her whole demeanor & vibe is bordering on the obsessive with HP, where he seems to be a little more grounded in reality. We now know that in the present Angela is 26 years old. So that means 8 years have gone by since they graduated from HS. We also know that Saskia is HP's wife & the mother of his child, & that she is currently missing. Hence the whole interrogation room thing & Angela being held on suspicion. So somewhere along the lines between the story Angela is telling of the first meeting with Saskia, & the present, HP and Saskia end up together and married.
Detective Novak's attention is immediately piqued upon Angela's first mention of Saskia. Of course he would be after having had to endure an entire 6 hour story about the love saga between HP and LJ(Angela) You'd think under normal circumstances where there is the issue of a missing woman & the first 48 hours are known to be rigidly essential that Novak would insist on having Angela answer his questions rather that meander and philander through a ridiculously detailed account of her high school boyfriend and high school dramas, but no, in this story, Detective Novak is in absolutely no rush at all and Angela gets to kick back and tell her story in prose, omitting not even a single detail, not one heated exchange, not one flirty look, not one sigh or emo word from HP. Every single painstaking irrelevant detail from the first words he spoke to her till now & everything in between. In actuality this makes no sense, and it was the biggest factor in my subtracting a star from the final rating. It's nothing short of ridiculous actually, & I really think the author ought to have been reminded once or twice exactly how she had laid out the story & that we are in fact supposed to be reading a conversation between two people and who talks like that in real life? Nobody. Not even the most famous poet, not even the most famous actress. But oh well, that is part of reading fiction. We have to suspend belief a lot of the time in order to let the story flow so that's what I did. (but that didn't stop me from continuously rolling my eyes at every part that was especially hard to swallow.)
So fast forward a bit. <<<<>>>>
Surprise surprise, Saskia's body turns up. This big reveal was rather anticlimactic in my opinion and what should have been a surprise, sorta felt like side news, a minor detail. The story continues to revolve around Angela's feelings for HP and the chemistry & exchanges between them. The whole time there was the fact of Saskia's disappearance hanging over us, but I didn't really get that sense of impending doom or waiting for the other shoe to drop the way one should when you're wondering whether somebody is going to live or die, turn up or stay missing. It was sorta like we already knew that Saskia was gonna be dead, but either way it was really no big deal, can we just carry along with the love Saga between Hp and Angela please, thank you very much. Whether or not that was Nay's intention I'm not really sure. Ultimately, at the very very very end it's finally revealed that Angela is in fact the sociopathic bad guy in the story and Saskia just a poor trusting victim, so maybe that was the point. For us to get a sense of how little value Angela really placed on Saskia's life & how minor of a detail Saskia was in her life. Angela's whole life and thought processes revolve around entirely around HP, as a teenager and continues that way even in adulthood, when years have clearly gone by where HP is with Saskia and living in Angela's town. But those years that they are together and Angela is not a part of their lives go by in the blink of an eye in the story we get from Angela. She speaks very briefly about it only to say that they saw each other occasionally at the grocery store, and that she passed away her time in her parents basement, finishing from school, working a job. All of these things mundane irrelevant details dropped haphazardly and quietly throughout the more important stuff which picks back up around the time she makes her way back into HP's life & he and Saskia ask her to be their daughter Olive's godmother. The whole time the question burning in my mind is more to do with Angela and HP than Saskia. I could sorta care less where Saskia was, what I wanted to know was were Angela and HP going to get back together? Did he love Angela the whole time? What happened in between the ball at Oxford & the present that resulted in a total finite ending between Angela and HP where he would marry and impregnate somebody else? Whether this was a shortcoming of Roz Nay's, or her intention I can't tell tho.
But things start to get creepy here, & Angela's dark twisted side begins to rear it's ugly head. Not fully tho, it's more like the scary monster peeking out from under the bed and all you can see is it's demon red eyes but you can imagine that it's gonna be bad. A hint of what's down there, but you can't see the full form quite yet. Saskia is a pretty static shallow character, there isn't much time spent on delving into her psyche or on humanizing her much. Everything we know about Saskia has been told to us by Angela, so naturally that means that beyond an annoying accent and a sunny-but-dumb disposition, we hardly know her. She's nothing more than an annoying inconvenience and roadblock for Angela. When Angela does creepy things like interject herself into Olive's life and ask her things like "Who do you like more, me or your mommy?" we start to get a sense at the creepiness, & outright boldness of Angela. The fact that she recounts these kinds of details without thinking there's anything to be ashamed of was a big factor in my deciding that Angela was psycho & probably killed Saskia, but again it was still a minor storyline, I still just wanted to know what happened between Angela and HP.
And finally, as it all unravels for Angela, body found, evidence collected, there was still bits that were left hazy for me. As Angela tells it, her mom and Freddy were co-conspirators, if not the ones directing it all & she just an unwilling participant. After an incident with HP where she basically throws herself at him (in the creepiest way ever, mind you.) their relationship goes to shit. Not only does HP shoot her down (once he realizes it's her anyway) but Saskia summons up her mama bear courage and goes absolutely apeshit on Angela when she comes home from bookclub to find a Angela in a state of undress. So rightly so, she is evicted from their home (Oh ya. She was actually staying with them. At their house. Ya, I know, how fucked up is that? In what world would that happen? In what world does a woman spend her time kissing the ass of her husband's ex? In what world does a man make these sort of requests of his wife/baby momma? Uh, can my ex girlfriend live in our house please? And we are gonna have our little secret moments and connections all the time & she's gonna be a royal bitch to you but can she move in downstairs and have dinner with us every day & hang out with our daughter? YA FUCKEN RIGHT.) But yet it happens somehow, & Saskia with her naturally optimistic outlook and sunny disposition is so desperate for friends that she somehow looks past every red flag Angela throws her way, but even she reaches her breaking point on that night. Angela ends up back with her mother complaining about the entire situation, not remorsefully tho, and Angela's mother responds with some equally batshit crazy logic. Like mother like daughter thats for freaking sure. Her mother more than anything is concerned with the degradation of the Pettijean image, the notion that somebody might be taking a piss on herdaughter. Her daughter is the best, and everybody should be aware of that. Angela depiction of her mom is as the coolest & most calculating of them all, the one with her head so far up her arse that she basically has no idea the depravity of her actions and behaves as if it is all perfectly normal to be discussing murdering somebody simply for peace of mind. Freddy on the other hand is depicted as rich, and rather in love with Angela, but mostly just so rich and superior that he has a natural tendency towards the undervaluing of lives. But still, all three of their cold and sociopathic personalities are clear and evident in Angela's stories, tho revealed unintentionally by Angela, and finally in the end Angela gets hers. We don't actually know until the very last sentence whether it was Angela who did the deed, or her mother or Freddy but at that point it doesn't really matter. What has always mattered is Angela & HP, and we know that that's over now. Angela's existence hardly matters anymore and that's mirrored in her actions, the careless devil-may-care way that she goes about the discussing & considering of Saskia's murder. It's all secondary to her love story that she holds so dear and obsesses over, the love story that she is so sure is just the love of a century, that perfect soul mate love never to be repeated. That is what Angela holds to her heart, that's what matters to her and it's clear in the story telling. Saskia's murder is minor in comparison, an annoying obstacle, a trivial afterthought. Even as she's in the interrogation room and Novak has brought out the evidence, Angela doesn't seem to understand the gravity of her situation. She's still in la la land, telling the story of her perfect HP and their perfect love and the things that were hers that were stolen from her.
All in all, it was a 3.5 stars for me. I wonder a bit how much listening to it instead of reading it affected my thinking. Did the annoying voices have a subconscious affect? Or not so sub conscious? Who knows. I'm still a little unclear about how much was intended & how much was accidental, did Roz Nay intend to construct a woman (and mother) so sociopathic that the murder of a woman is hardly more than an irrelavent detail in a story, or was it a flaw in her writing? I guess I will never know. (Unless I happen to meet her & ask her & she tells me)
My biggest complaint is that for all of the drama & weight of the Angela and HP storyline, I think there is soo much missing, and I wanted soo much more. I wanted to know exactly how they broke up. Instead of having HP catch Angela & Freddie half way indisposed & then the story basically end there and pick up again with HP married to Saskia, I wanted to see how exactly they fell apart. Who said what? What was exchanged, what was said, what happened. The breakup is the most interesting part, the real heart of the matte, the painful force that drove Angela for years. Why did we see none of that & instead just fast forwarded and skipped majorly important chunks? And, the biggest thing that was missing that I was desperate to see was the confronting of Angela by HP. There is one quick part, before Saskia turns up when the possibilities still linger when HP comes into the interrogation room to ask Angela himself if she knows anything about her disappearance. Angela spots his barely restrained composure & figures it out quickly that he's trying to manipulate her into confessing what she knows or divulging some piece of info. She calls him on it tho, & he snaps, screaming at her, demanding she tell him where his "fucking wife' is. This was the 1st & only insight I ever have into HP's mind, the one bit of info that was given to us by Angela but yet not able to be tainted with her careless translations. I see here that HP does in fact love his wife, where for the most of it I wondered whether Saskia was just an accident & Angela his true true love. But once again, I fell prey to Angela's depictions. She told it the way she wanted it to be, I suppose, or at least maybe just the way she saw it, & I imagine she figured out a way to ignore the big signs that said 'HP LOVES SASKIA.' But my point here in all this was just to say that I wanted to see a confrontation where HP confronts Angela & the crack finally visible in in Angela's lovey-dovey romanticized portrayals of their love. Basically, I wanted to see HP unleash on Angela. But of course we never get that.
3.5 stars.
Basically as the story opens we are sitting in a police interrogation room with Angela Pettijean. (interesting thing about audio books is that I never actually saw the words, so spelling of names is a guess) She is talking to the officers, noting casually the habits of the officers, their methods, the trade off between younger cop & older, more experienced cop. She seems to be a suspect for something, but her attitude towards this is bored, slightly incredulous, a bit annoyed. When Officer Novak sits down, for whatever reason Angela takes to him more than the others. He starts in on his line of questioning, does Angela know what happened to Saskia? Where is Saskia? Does Angela hate Saskia? We as the reader have no idea at this point who Saskia is, or really Angela either. They're both strangers to us, but here Angela starts in on her story. In response to his questions, Angela agrees to tell him things. But, she interjects, she's going to tell him her way. She's going to go back & tell the whole story, the part of story that matters to her, & he pretty much is just going to have to listen if he wants to know anything about Saskia, or about Angela's relationship with Saskia. Novak agrees. Angela begins.
And so that's how the story is set up, as Angela in an interrogation room telling Detective Novak a story. And in that way, the actual meat of this story unfolds, & that's really the love story between Angela & her first & true love, HP. Only in that story, she's LJ, for Little John. The name HP gives her. Angela is nothing but a loner in her teen years until HP sorta picks her up as his bff. Initially they are just friends, with Angela obviously adoring him consistently since first meeting all the while HP circulates through all the willing females in the area. We get the sense he's a sort of player. The sort of tortured soul, an I'm-only-16-years-old-yet-I-imagine-that-I-carry-all-the-wisdom-&-tragedy-of-a-man-much-older-than-myself-&-because-I'm-a-teenager-I-think-I'm-just-so-smart-and-philosophical-&-coooool. But, all the girls want him and so does Angela, & when after a school camping trip & a couple years of LJ hanging around like a sad puppy dog waiting around for scraps, they finally do the deed & not only sleep together, but begin a relationship, Angela is in heaven. He is her everything and the two of them carry on in the manner of all self absorbed teens (and people, really) feeling giddy & happy & just oh-so-superior. Everything is just fine & dandy, tho the big bad college departure looms in the distance. Angela has zero interest in college or continuing any kind of life without HP, but her parents are both heavily invested in her life, & when her Dad pulls strings to get her into some program at Oxford, Angela agrees, disinclined to let her Dad down. But rather than divulge this piece of info to HP she lets the knowledge sit. Finally, when there's only about a week left before her embarkment across the pond, the info comes out via other means and HP is naturally and understandably both surprised and upset. Why would she keep that important piece of info from him? He feels deceived, but being cool-Joe-Schmoe, he takes it all in stride, with only a dig or two at Angela serving as any evidence at all that he even cares. They determine, in the manner of probably billions of teens before them, that they will try to maintain their connection but yet without any expectations or obligations. Let's just see how it goes kind of thing. Vague. Suspicious. Of course. But we've all been there, done that am I right? Who of us hasn't been in that sort of situation? Breeding ground for suspicion & insecurity if you ask me, but hey. We all of us were young once, we all have egos & pride & fear & insecurities up the wazoo. Angela says nothing, & the year goes by that way. Angela befriends a rich English upperclassmen named Freddy, & it's not till the year has nearly ended that HP shows up with his best friend Ezra at Oxford. They pick up where they left off, both of them admitting that there had not been anybody else, & everything seems peachy keen till the night of "the ball."
A big night, a sort of prom, but for university kids at Oxford. Angela has transformed her tomboy look into tomboy-sexy-chic, with an oversized white mans shirt tailored to fit, loose tie, knee high boots with 4 inch heel. HP is looking glam in a tux. It's like Cinderella, and Angela's depiction of the night is sheer perfection. They are still so in love, their "unique" connection intact, their chemistry sizzling & on high. The only snag on an otherwise perfect time is when HP meets Freddy. Of course, the typical jealousies are crackling in the air but they're mostly left unspoken. And anyway, Angela immediately insists that they're just friends. All seems well. But, in a storyline that is probably familiar to so many of us, a bar happens. College-aged kids are young, hot & horny. Everybody is in their prime of youth, love feelings are flying around, jealousy & possessiveness & lust, insecurities exacerbated & compounded by 1st time experiences.
Enter Saskia. Australian. Tanned, blonde, & freckled. I think if I had only read the words written about her I would have viewed her entirely different, probably as a blonde goddess from down under but with the audio & the strange, overly energetic, too-sugary-sweet australian accent that the reader uses, she's made out to be rather ridiculous.
What follows is the typical storyline that is so familiar that it's almost comedic. HP is talking to Saskia. Angela watches and gets jealous. They get separated. Angela assumes HP is hooking up with new girl Saskia, so she runs off looking for Freddy. She hooks up with Freddy a little bit. Then appears HP, only he wasn't hooking up with Saskia. But now what's done is done, & alas. Things are f'd up. HP calls Angela out for having shady friendships which feels unjust to Angela but after watching her just manipulate Freddy completely, I really have no sympathy for her. HP is right on the money. He leaves, & their relationship for the time being, is done.
Now and then we are brought back to the interrogation room which is easy to forget is really the present. Somewhere along the lines, I think starting right about at this point in the story we start to sense that Angela may not be the most reliable narrator, but we aren't sure yet. She started off sounding normal, but slowly but surely crazy person vibes begin to radiate from her. Her whole demeanor & vibe is bordering on the obsessive with HP, where he seems to be a little more grounded in reality. We now know that in the present Angela is 26 years old. So that means 8 years have gone by since they graduated from HS. We also know that Saskia is HP's wife & the mother of his child, & that she is currently missing. Hence the whole interrogation room thing & Angela being held on suspicion. So somewhere along the lines between the story Angela is telling of the first meeting with Saskia, & the present, HP and Saskia end up together and married.
Detective Novak's attention is immediately piqued upon Angela's first mention of Saskia. Of course he would be after having had to endure an entire 6 hour story about the love saga between HP and LJ(Angela) You'd think under normal circumstances where there is the issue of a missing woman & the first 48 hours are known to be rigidly essential that Novak would insist on having Angela answer his questions rather that meander and philander through a ridiculously detailed account of her high school boyfriend and high school dramas, but no, in this story, Detective Novak is in absolutely no rush at all and Angela gets to kick back and tell her story in prose, omitting not even a single detail, not one heated exchange, not one flirty look, not one sigh or emo word from HP. Every single painstaking irrelevant detail from the first words he spoke to her till now & everything in between. In actuality this makes no sense, and it was the biggest factor in my subtracting a star from the final rating. It's nothing short of ridiculous actually, & I really think the author ought to have been reminded once or twice exactly how she had laid out the story & that we are in fact supposed to be reading a conversation between two people and who talks like that in real life? Nobody. Not even the most famous poet, not even the most famous actress. But oh well, that is part of reading fiction. We have to suspend belief a lot of the time in order to let the story flow so that's what I did. (but that didn't stop me from continuously rolling my eyes at every part that was especially hard to swallow.)
So fast forward a bit. <<<<
Surprise surprise, Saskia's body turns up. This big reveal was rather anticlimactic in my opinion and what should have been a surprise, sorta felt like side news, a minor detail. The story continues to revolve around Angela's feelings for HP and the chemistry & exchanges between them. The whole time there was the fact of Saskia's disappearance hanging over us, but I didn't really get that sense of impending doom or waiting for the other shoe to drop the way one should when you're wondering whether somebody is going to live or die, turn up or stay missing. It was sorta like we already knew that Saskia was gonna be dead, but either way it was really no big deal, can we just carry along with the love Saga between Hp and Angela please, thank you very much. Whether or not that was Nay's intention I'm not really sure. Ultimately, at the very very very end it's finally revealed that Angela is in fact the sociopathic bad guy in the story and Saskia just a poor trusting victim, so maybe that was the point. For us to get a sense of how little value Angela really placed on Saskia's life & how minor of a detail Saskia was in her life. Angela's whole life and thought processes revolve around entirely around HP, as a teenager and continues that way even in adulthood, when years have clearly gone by where HP is with Saskia and living in Angela's town. But those years that they are together and Angela is not a part of their lives go by in the blink of an eye in the story we get from Angela. She speaks very briefly about it only to say that they saw each other occasionally at the grocery store, and that she passed away her time in her parents basement, finishing from school, working a job. All of these things mundane irrelevant details dropped haphazardly and quietly throughout the more important stuff which picks back up around the time she makes her way back into HP's life & he and Saskia ask her to be their daughter Olive's godmother. The whole time the question burning in my mind is more to do with Angela and HP than Saskia. I could sorta care less where Saskia was, what I wanted to know was were Angela and HP going to get back together? Did he love Angela the whole time? What happened in between the ball at Oxford & the present that resulted in a total finite ending between Angela and HP where he would marry and impregnate somebody else? Whether this was a shortcoming of Roz Nay's, or her intention I can't tell tho.
But things start to get creepy here, & Angela's dark twisted side begins to rear it's ugly head. Not fully tho, it's more like the scary monster peeking out from under the bed and all you can see is it's demon red eyes but you can imagine that it's gonna be bad. A hint of what's down there, but you can't see the full form quite yet. Saskia is a pretty static shallow character, there isn't much time spent on delving into her psyche or on humanizing her much. Everything we know about Saskia has been told to us by Angela, so naturally that means that beyond an annoying accent and a sunny-but-dumb disposition, we hardly know her. She's nothing more than an annoying inconvenience and roadblock for Angela. When Angela does creepy things like interject herself into Olive's life and ask her things like "Who do you like more, me or your mommy?" we start to get a sense at the creepiness, & outright boldness of Angela. The fact that she recounts these kinds of details without thinking there's anything to be ashamed of was a big factor in my deciding that Angela was psycho & probably killed Saskia, but again it was still a minor storyline, I still just wanted to know what happened between Angela and HP.
And finally, as it all unravels for Angela, body found, evidence collected, there was still bits that were left hazy for me. As Angela tells it, her mom and Freddy were co-conspirators, if not the ones directing it all & she just an unwilling participant. After an incident with HP where she basically throws herself at him (in the creepiest way ever, mind you.) their relationship goes to shit. Not only does HP shoot her down (once he realizes it's her anyway) but Saskia summons up her mama bear courage and goes absolutely apeshit on Angela when she comes home from bookclub to find a Angela in a state of undress. So rightly so, she is evicted from their home (Oh ya. She was actually staying with them. At their house. Ya, I know, how fucked up is that? In what world would that happen? In what world does a woman spend her time kissing the ass of her husband's ex? In what world does a man make these sort of requests of his wife/baby momma? Uh, can my ex girlfriend live in our house please? And we are gonna have our little secret moments and connections all the time & she's gonna be a royal bitch to you but can she move in downstairs and have dinner with us every day & hang out with our daughter? YA FUCKEN RIGHT.) But yet it happens somehow, & Saskia with her naturally optimistic outlook and sunny disposition is so desperate for friends that she somehow looks past every red flag Angela throws her way, but even she reaches her breaking point on that night. Angela ends up back with her mother complaining about the entire situation, not remorsefully tho, and Angela's mother responds with some equally batshit crazy logic. Like mother like daughter thats for freaking sure. Her mother more than anything is concerned with the degradation of the Pettijean image, the notion that somebody might be taking a piss on herdaughter. Her daughter is the best, and everybody should be aware of that. Angela depiction of her mom is as the coolest & most calculating of them all, the one with her head so far up her arse that she basically has no idea the depravity of her actions and behaves as if it is all perfectly normal to be discussing murdering somebody simply for peace of mind. Freddy on the other hand is depicted as rich, and rather in love with Angela, but mostly just so rich and superior that he has a natural tendency towards the undervaluing of lives. But still, all three of their cold and sociopathic personalities are clear and evident in Angela's stories, tho revealed unintentionally by Angela, and finally in the end Angela gets hers. We don't actually know until the very last sentence whether it was Angela who did the deed, or her mother or Freddy but at that point it doesn't really matter. What has always mattered is Angela & HP, and we know that that's over now. Angela's existence hardly matters anymore and that's mirrored in her actions, the careless devil-may-care way that she goes about the discussing & considering of Saskia's murder. It's all secondary to her love story that she holds so dear and obsesses over, the love story that she is so sure is just the love of a century, that perfect soul mate love never to be repeated. That is what Angela holds to her heart, that's what matters to her and it's clear in the story telling. Saskia's murder is minor in comparison, an annoying obstacle, a trivial afterthought. Even as she's in the interrogation room and Novak has brought out the evidence, Angela doesn't seem to understand the gravity of her situation. She's still in la la land, telling the story of her perfect HP and their perfect love and the things that were hers that were stolen from her.
All in all, it was a 3.5 stars for me. I wonder a bit how much listening to it instead of reading it affected my thinking. Did the annoying voices have a subconscious affect? Or not so sub conscious? Who knows. I'm still a little unclear about how much was intended & how much was accidental, did Roz Nay intend to construct a woman (and mother) so sociopathic that the murder of a woman is hardly more than an irrelavent detail in a story, or was it a flaw in her writing? I guess I will never know. (Unless I happen to meet her & ask her & she tells me)
My biggest complaint is that for all of the drama & weight of the Angela and HP storyline, I think there is soo much missing, and I wanted soo much more. I wanted to know exactly how they broke up. Instead of having HP catch Angela & Freddie half way indisposed & then the story basically end there and pick up again with HP married to Saskia, I wanted to see how exactly they fell apart. Who said what? What was exchanged, what was said, what happened. The breakup is the most interesting part, the real heart of the matte, the painful force that drove Angela for years. Why did we see none of that & instead just fast forwarded and skipped majorly important chunks? And, the biggest thing that was missing that I was desperate to see was the confronting of Angela by HP. There is one quick part, before Saskia turns up when the possibilities still linger when HP comes into the interrogation room to ask Angela himself if she knows anything about her disappearance. Angela spots his barely restrained composure & figures it out quickly that he's trying to manipulate her into confessing what she knows or divulging some piece of info. She calls him on it tho, & he snaps, screaming at her, demanding she tell him where his "fucking wife' is. This was the 1st & only insight I ever have into HP's mind, the one bit of info that was given to us by Angela but yet not able to be tainted with her careless translations. I see here that HP does in fact love his wife, where for the most of it I wondered whether Saskia was just an accident & Angela his true true love. But once again, I fell prey to Angela's depictions. She told it the way she wanted it to be, I suppose, or at least maybe just the way she saw it, & I imagine she figured out a way to ignore the big signs that said 'HP LOVES SASKIA.' But my point here in all this was just to say that I wanted to see a confrontation where HP confronts Angela & the crack finally visible in in Angela's lovey-dovey romanticized portrayals of their love. Basically, I wanted to see HP unleash on Angela. But of course we never get that.
3.5 stars.