Scan barcode
A review by deeclancy
My Best Friend's Murder by Polly Phillips
2.0
Initially, this was interesting and I was awaiting the murder of Izzy with anticipation, on the grounds that someone was going to do it at some stage. We've all met people like Izzy, sometimes as teenage friends, people who think friendship is a game of one-upmanship and whose entire life is a PR exercise. Anyone who has been a teengage girl will agree that the only thing worse than one of these friends is one of these friends who doesn't actually grow beyond their immature values.
But the plot of this book goes awry some time after the murder and just continues toward implausibility (given what we know about the characters) from there, until it seems the narrator's entire narration has been a deception as well. We are suddenly told this in the last few paragraphs, then it's "Goodnight folks and thanks for reading", as if this neatly ties it up. It doesn't; it's completely ludicrous and annoying, and means the narrative threads of the rest of the book are now pointless. As a reader, I don't like being tricked by authors in a way that is facile, and I doubt many others do either. A genuine plot twist would have to be a bit more thought through for me to appreciate it. This could have been a decent mystery/thriller, and the writing is clear, but it lost its bearings somewhere about half-way through.
But the plot of this book goes awry some time after the murder and just continues toward implausibility (given what we know about the characters) from there, until it seems the narrator's entire narration has been a deception as well. We are suddenly told this in the last few paragraphs, then it's "Goodnight folks and thanks for reading", as if this neatly ties it up. It doesn't; it's completely ludicrous and annoying, and means the narrative threads of the rest of the book are now pointless. As a reader, I don't like being tricked by authors in a way that is facile, and I doubt many others do either. A genuine plot twist would have to be a bit more thought through for me to appreciate it. This could have been a decent mystery/thriller, and the writing is clear, but it lost its bearings somewhere about half-way through.