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A review by maggers94
Keep Your Friends Close by Lucinda Berry
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
I have had awful luck with both Lucinda Berry books I've read so far. I'm starting to think her writing style just isn't for me. This was like Real Housewives murder edition, but despite my love for the trashy, reality-tv version of rich women behaving badly, this didn't do it for me.
The book itself opens in the aftermath of a woman being found dead at a party for her Beverly Hills moms group, which is presumably what the story will focus around, but the investigation into her death seems like a side plot. Instead you have messy divorces, custody disputes, illegal escort operations, cheating spouses, pretty much everything but who the victim is and how she ended up murdered. You know hardly anything about the victim other than being told that she and her best friend have an extremely strange codependent relationship. When the story gets around to solving her murder it feels like an "Oh by the way, also this happened and here's the clues that were never mentioned but the police were somehow unearthing behind the scenes the entire time." You completely forget about Kiersten as a victim, so quite frankly I didn't even really care whether the investigation was resolved by the end.
The final chapter from Kiersten's perspective also felt rushed and frankly kind of half-assed. The secret pregnancy plotline was hardly fleshed out and felt like an after thought that needed to be thrown in there to explain why no one seemed to know she was pregnant. Plus how in the world could you steal another woman's embryo, implant it at home, and no one know? Is that even possible to do on your own?? If it was stolen sperm I'd get it, but I've never heard of turkey basting a whole embryo??? (Also Whitney never asked what happened to baby #2's embryo she was presumably going to appointments to create??)
Poorly done pregnancy and murder plot aside, the rest of the book's characters are all extremely unlikeable and their stories were hard to get invested in. The narration almost feels like a stream of consciousness for each character, but they don't feel fully fleshed out as people. I felt like I was getting a very surface-level depiction of who they are and their motivations, so it was hard to connect with them. At no point was I rooting for anyone, and their three perspectives felt like a jumble of loosely interconnected plot lines. Brooke's story felt completely out place and like it belonged in its own book. Her "twist" at the end was the obvious path for her plot and really didn't add anything to the story for me. It felt completely unnecessary. The story could have cut her out and solely focused on fleshing out Whitney and Jade's plots and it would have lost nothing.
There are definitely pieces of the plot that could have made for a good story, but it's just not put together well enough to be believable or compelling. I may still give Saving Noah or Appetite for Innocence a try since those seem to be the Lucinda Berry books people love the most, but the problems I had with this book are pretty much the same as what I had with Off The Deep End, so I don't have a lot of faith that any of the rest of her books will be for me.
The book itself opens in the aftermath of a woman being found dead at a party for her Beverly Hills moms group, which is presumably what the story will focus around, but the investigation into her death seems like a side plot.
Poorly done pregnancy and murder plot aside, the rest of the book's characters are all extremely unlikeable and their stories were hard to get invested in. The narration almost feels like a stream of consciousness for each character, but they don't feel fully fleshed out as people. I felt like I was getting a very surface-level depiction of who they are and their motivations, so it was hard to connect with them. At no point was I rooting for anyone, and their three perspectives felt like a jumble of loosely interconnected plot lines. Brooke's story felt completely out place and like it belonged in its own book. Her "twist" at the end was the obvious path for her plot and really didn't add anything to the story for me. It felt completely unnecessary. The story could have cut her out and solely focused on fleshing out Whitney and Jade's plots and it would have lost nothing.
There are definitely pieces of the plot that could have made for a good story, but it's just not put together well enough to be believable or compelling. I may still give Saving Noah or Appetite for Innocence a try since those seem to be the Lucinda Berry books people love the most, but the problems I had with this book are pretty much the same as what I had with Off The Deep End, so I don't have a lot of faith that any of the rest of her books will be for me.