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ursulamonarch 's review for:
Give Me Your Hand
by Megan Abbott
ugh this book was so tantalizing and so frustrating!!! There was tons of potential - a book focused on women, female friendship/competition, women's health - all great topics! But the execution had lots of problems. I felt like the first third of the book needlessly dragged out Diane's "secret" and set expectations too high for me, such that the revelation that she killed her father seemed anticlimactic. Alex felt like a throw away character, although not as much as his fiancee was! I still don't get the logistics of what happened to his body, or what poor Serge was really up to. Basically, it didn't feel like the plot held up. Furthermore, the whole setup seemed like it was centered on a really neat idea, but the details didn't pan out either. There were enough details in place to set up Alex's death, but what kind of columns were they always running? How did the cells they were growing connect to the chemistry they were doing, and why was Kit thinking her cell culture might be contaminated, but not doing anything about it?! As someone who worked in biology labs for 15 years, the setting didn't feel realistic to me - it felt like there were enough details to try to make it seem realistic, and maybe it was to someone who hasn't been in a lab, but the lab environment didn't ring true to me.
As a sidenote, this issue made me wonder about some of the other details in the book. I appreciated that one character grew up in modest circumstances, but I wonder if someone would find that that rang false as well.
Having said all this, the twist at the end was pretty fun and I would probably watch a movie of the book.
Overall I just found this book really frustrating, which seems to be my general reaction to Megan Abbott.
As a sidenote, this issue made me wonder about some of the other details in the book. I appreciated that one character grew up in modest circumstances, but I wonder if someone would find that that rang false as well.
Having said all this, the twist at the end was pretty fun and I would probably watch a movie of the book.
Overall I just found this book really frustrating, which seems to be my general reaction to Megan Abbott.