A review by lola425
Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante

4.0

I'm waffling between three and four stars. On the one hand, it gave a heartbreaking view of dementia. The writing was excellent, the way the text was unvelied in a non-linear, truncated way was very effective. I sympathized with Jennifer, who came acorss before her illness as hyper-competant, driven and smart. To lose your most identifying faculties that way is devastating, and devastating to those close to you because because they can see what you, on the inside, cannot. Also, Jennifer's marriage was of particular interest to me as I am always curious to see how strong women navigate this institution. Very interesting portrayal of a marriage. So, four stars for these aspects of the book. What I didn't like was the murder mystery central to the plot. For one thing, I wanted to kill Amanda, so annoying was she. I really didn't care who killed her, although it became evident once all the cast of characters was introduced who that killer would be and what would happen once it came to light. I felt similarly about Lupton's Sister: there was a lot of great stuff in there, a lot of substance but the fore-plot (is that a word?) took away something from that substance. Still really liked the book.