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A review by bookph1le
Give Me Your Hand by Megan Abbott
2.0
I really liked You Will Know Me, but this one just left me cold. Spoilers ahead.
I found this book very disjointed at times, particularly in the beginning, to the extent that I sometimes had trouble following it.
The dynamic between the two women needed more work. I could understand Kit being freaked out by what Diane told her, but their relationship didn't seem fully formed to me. It would have made more sense had their relationship come across as codependent instead of one sided. Kit's continuing to be haunted by what Diane told her would make more sense to me had the two women had a very close relationship before the revelation. I would have preferred it had the book condensed more of Kit's opening narrative to allow more space to flesh out her relationship with Diane instead of just telling it in a few tiny flashbacks designed to lay all the pieces in line for the plot.
I very, very much disliked the explanation for what Diane did what she did. That trope is so tired. I'm dismayed by how often thrillers conclude with "because s/he was crazy" as an explanation. It's not only lazy writing, it's a damaging and misleading depiction of mental illness. The truth most of us don't want to acknowledge--and that so many authors of buzzy thrillers seem unwilling to challenge themselves to write about--is that most crimes are committed by people without mental illnesses for a variety of reasons, many of them mundane. I really long for mystery and thriller writers to write complex character portrayals that expose what motivates crimes rather than whipping out the "crazy" trope. Abbott obviously did a lot of research about working in labs, but I wish she'd spent more time on her characters and less time on lab details, something I know she's capable of doing because she did a much better job of it with You Will Know Me.
One other thing: I find it so annoying the way authors structure suspense novels of late, coyly hinting at some terrible, terrible secret for scores of pages before the big reveal. This technique works well when the hints are subtle, but when they're as obvious as they were with this book it's not hard to figure the secret out long before it's revealed. That cheats the reader of the payoff that makes the teasing worthwhile and instead makes the teasing annoying and tiresome.
I found this book very disjointed at times, particularly in the beginning, to the extent that I sometimes had trouble following it.
The dynamic between the two women needed more work. I could understand Kit being freaked out by what Diane told her, but their relationship didn't seem fully formed to me. It would have made more sense had their relationship come across as codependent instead of one sided. Kit's continuing to be haunted by what Diane told her would make more sense to me had the two women had a very close relationship before the revelation. I would have preferred it had the book condensed more of Kit's opening narrative to allow more space to flesh out her relationship with Diane instead of just telling it in a few tiny flashbacks designed to lay all the pieces in line for the plot.
I very, very much disliked the explanation for what Diane did what she did. That trope is so tired. I'm dismayed by how often thrillers conclude with "because s/he was crazy" as an explanation. It's not only lazy writing, it's a damaging and misleading depiction of mental illness. The truth most of us don't want to acknowledge--and that so many authors of buzzy thrillers seem unwilling to challenge themselves to write about--is that most crimes are committed by people without mental illnesses for a variety of reasons, many of them mundane. I really long for mystery and thriller writers to write complex character portrayals that expose what motivates crimes rather than whipping out the "crazy" trope. Abbott obviously did a lot of research about working in labs, but I wish she'd spent more time on her characters and less time on lab details, something I know she's capable of doing because she did a much better job of it with You Will Know Me.
One other thing: I find it so annoying the way authors structure suspense novels of late, coyly hinting at some terrible, terrible secret for scores of pages before the big reveal. This technique works well when the hints are subtle, but when they're as obvious as they were with this book it's not hard to figure the secret out long before it's revealed. That cheats the reader of the payoff that makes the teasing worthwhile and instead makes the teasing annoying and tiresome.