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A review by jenstarkey
Your Life Is Mine by Nathan Ripley
2.0
I really enjoyed Nathan Ripley's debut "thriller", Find You in the Dark, so this was a disappointment for me. I put thriller in quotation marks because Ripley's style isn't conducive for ratcheting up the tension, and I just can't feel a sense of urgency from his writing. Not that this isn't effective when the subject matter is slyly creepy like his first book - but in this one, it makes the action fall flat.
Your Life Is Mine is about Blanche Potter, the daughter of cult leader Chuck Varner. When Blanche was ten, Chuck committed a mass shooting in a local mall to "spread his message", and then killed himself, leaving Blanche alone with her mother Crissy. Groomed to become the next 'Chuck' by her parents, Blanche instead leaves town when she turns eighteen, and goes on to become a successful documentary filmmaker. When her mother is murdered, Blanche returns to the 'scene of the crime', worried that Chuck's particular brand of evil is rising again.
There were a few things I didn't like about this book. For one thing, I found it extremely difficult to 'get into'. I just couldn't find a way IN. It was like there was a brick wall between me and the characters. None of them appealed to me - even Blanche, the ostensible 'heroine'. She didn't ring true, and I couldn't get my head around her relationship with Jaya, her supposed best friend. Jaya mainly shows up so they can have odd sexual tension and/or so she can yell at her for being irresponsible / keeping secrets.
None of the twists felt much like 'twists', besides one bombshell toward the end, and I just couldn't find any pleasure in this tale. It was joyless. I'm sure others will feel differently, and certainly I really liked Nathan Ripley's first novel, so let's hope this was just the sophomore curse.
Your Life Is Mine is about Blanche Potter, the daughter of cult leader Chuck Varner. When Blanche was ten, Chuck committed a mass shooting in a local mall to "spread his message", and then killed himself, leaving Blanche alone with her mother Crissy. Groomed to become the next 'Chuck' by her parents, Blanche instead leaves town when she turns eighteen, and goes on to become a successful documentary filmmaker. When her mother is murdered, Blanche returns to the 'scene of the crime', worried that Chuck's particular brand of evil is rising again.
There were a few things I didn't like about this book. For one thing, I found it extremely difficult to 'get into'. I just couldn't find a way IN. It was like there was a brick wall between me and the characters. None of them appealed to me - even Blanche, the ostensible 'heroine'. She didn't ring true, and I couldn't get my head around her relationship with Jaya, her supposed best friend. Jaya mainly shows up so they can have odd sexual tension and/or so she can yell at her for being irresponsible / keeping secrets.
None of the twists felt much like 'twists', besides one bombshell toward the end, and I just couldn't find any pleasure in this tale. It was joyless. I'm sure others will feel differently, and certainly I really liked Nathan Ripley's first novel, so let's hope this was just the sophomore curse.