A review by hazelbright
Stay With Me by Alison Gaylin

1.0

Written competently enough, the story circles around Our Heroine's personal life like a turd making its way down the toilet bowl. We get self-described earth-shattering revelations about Our Heroine's father, sister, and mother. The plot peripherally revolves around the abduction of Our Heroine's daughter, and Our Heroine's efforts, along with her boyfriend, her ex-husband, her ex's wife, and her male secretary to find Our Heroine's daughter.

The one police officer involved is killed because she makes errors of judgement that no trained police officer would ever make. All non family members or people not part of Our Heroine's daily world die in this myopically narcissistic story-line. The daughter simply reappears after the long search making all of the "detecting" done by Our Heroine irrelevant. In the epilogue, the bloodthirsty female serial killer (EXTREMELY UNLIKELY) sister is eulogized and her behavior rationalized.

The blatant authoritarian segregation of in-group (all actions are excusable) and other

(who cares if they die)

disgusted me.

The finale is the appearance of the long-lost Robert, of course, not because he is interesting on his own, but because he is part of the family in-group

. The unintended theme in this novel is not the importance of family.

If it were, Trent would have a family and would be changed by it. But no, Trent and his potential family are never mentioned again. The message is: We don't really need to care about Trent. He is not connected by blood to Our Heroine. He is only just barely part of the in-group, and is exploitable. If he were to have a family to care about, he would not be the partying dude clown character required by our tedious, long-suffering heroine.

The message is, as always from authoritarian writers, protect your in-group. Nothing else matters.