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A review by missrhinnan
The Stranger Behind You by Carol Goodman
1.0
This comes a close second to Alex Michaelides’ The Maidens in being the worst thing I’ve read this year—but only *just*, which admittedly is not saying a whole lot. But like The Maidens, it did have two of the dumbest female characters I’ve read since that book’s Mariana.
This book was a mess from beginning to end and having your two narrators read like complete dumbshits definitely didn’t help when your story (or rather, all the stories it was trying to encompass) fails. Is this book a crime mystery? An examination of our culture of sexual harassment and the #metoo movement? A post-war Coney Island gangster tale? Let’s just throw in ghosts too bc why the hell not?
Let’s start with Joan, a young journalist who’s written an exposé on a sexual predator. So you think she would know better about not going to the police after she herself is physically assaulted, likely causing a concussion bc she spends the rest of the novel barely able to see for the blurring of her vision, and attributing things she doesn’t remember to “her brain damage.” Yet she refuses to see a doctor for fear the news of her assault would overshadow the story she’s broken. Other than being a dumbshit and an agoraphobe as a result of her attack, Joan really doesn’t have much of a personality.
Then there’s Melissa who, despite being in her 40s, uses words like “chit” in her constant cartoonish denigration of Joan bc she blames her entirely for the the loss of her perfect life and not, you know, her sexual predator of a husband. Ironic considering one plot point involves Melissa deducing the online identity of a witness’s mother based on the fact that nobody under the age of 40 would be named “Barbara.” But apparently Joan is an entirely more common name, especially for 20-somethings. I think these instances reflect more on the author’s own age than anything else.
Otherwise, elitist, spoiled, entitled label/brand dropping white woman Melissa spends almost the entire novel being a elitist, spoiled, entitled, label/brand dropping white woman (who also somehow manages to buy a co-op apartment in NYC and move in *a week later*) until the very end when it seems she’s been suddenly taken over by a completely different personality. How Melissa could have supposedly gone to Brown and been a (presumably) good journalist and be as stupid as she was defies all logic. As does the fact that this stay at home society mom somehow has mad computer hacking and pickpocketing skills but is yet still too stupid to be alive.
This book was a mess from beginning to end and having your two narrators read like complete dumbshits definitely didn’t help when your story (or rather, all the stories it was trying to encompass) fails. Is this book a crime mystery? An examination of our culture of sexual harassment and the #metoo movement? A post-war Coney Island gangster tale? Let’s just throw in ghosts too bc why the hell not?
Let’s start with Joan, a young journalist who’s written an exposé on a sexual predator. So you think she would know better about not going to the police after she herself is physically assaulted, likely causing a concussion bc she spends the rest of the novel barely able to see for the blurring of her vision, and attributing things she doesn’t remember to “her brain damage.” Yet she refuses to see a doctor for fear the news of her assault would overshadow the story she’s broken. Other than being a dumbshit and an agoraphobe as a result of her attack, Joan really doesn’t have much of a personality.
Then there’s Melissa who, despite being in her 40s, uses words like “chit” in her constant cartoonish denigration of Joan bc she blames her entirely for the the loss of her perfect life and not, you know, her sexual predator of a husband. Ironic considering one plot point involves Melissa deducing the online identity of a witness’s mother based on the fact that nobody under the age of 40 would be named “Barbara.” But apparently Joan is an entirely more common name, especially for 20-somethings. I think these instances reflect more on the author’s own age than anything else.
Otherwise, elitist, spoiled, entitled label/brand dropping white woman Melissa spends almost the entire novel being a elitist, spoiled, entitled, label/brand dropping white woman (who also somehow manages to buy a co-op apartment in NYC and move in *a week later*) until the very end when it seems she’s been suddenly taken over by a completely different personality. How Melissa could have supposedly gone to Brown and been a (presumably) good journalist and be as stupid as she was defies all logic. As does the fact that this stay at home society mom somehow has mad computer hacking and pickpocketing skills but is yet still too stupid to be alive.