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A review by marilynw
The Dead Ex by Jane Corry
3.0
This review seems difficult to write. I enjoyed the book but it was very convoluted. At first I had severe doubts about the main character of Vicki. When the book begins, she is an aroma therapist, dealing with epilepsy and the problems that her epilepsy medicines cause, while always wondering when her next seizure will happen. We know things have happened in her past that are important to the present time but these things are revealed slowly and later in the book. We know that Vicki is still obsessed with her former husband David and mourns a child named Patrick.
With what we know towards the beginning of the book, I don’t trust Vicki or her memory of events. There is mention of prison and memory losses due to her seizures and the side effects of the medicines that she takes. She lives her life afraid that people will find out about her epilepsy and not want to use her as an aroma therapist and she is afraid of the dangers of having a seizure while alone or in public.
We also meet an eight year old girl named Scarlet, whose timeline starts in 2006. Scarlet is used by her drug and alcohol abusing mother, in order to help her mother commit crimes for money and anything else her mother wants. Scarlet thinks what she and her mother do are games and doesn’t realize that her mother is using her to pursue her life of crime. Eventually Scarlet’s mom is arrested and Scarlet is sent to live in foster homes, the first one horrible, the second one very good, but all Scarlet can think of is that she has been taken away from her mother and that she wants to be with her mother again.
The story is told from alternating views of Vicki in present time and Scarlet from 2006 and going forward and then eventually from the views of Vicki and Helen. None of the narrators are very reliable, Vicki because she doesn’t want to face certain things, reveal certain things, and can’t remember certain things and Scarlet because she’s young and has been raised horribly by a criminal of a mother and because she’s so traumatized by her life that she has no grasp of what is really happening in it and to her. And then there is Helen, who we know is looking for something by taking up with Vicki’s ex-husband David, but we don’t know what she wants from him or why she wants it.
Further into the book I began to really like Vicki because we learn she was an educated, hard worker, who picked her career (before her second career of being an aroma therapist) based on wanting to help others and we are allowed to understand things that happened in Vicki’s life that led her to her present day problems and worries. Scarlet is a sympathetic character too, especially because she is so young, has been used and abused by her criminal mother, because she had no one to show her what a normal, healthy life should be like. At the same time, Scarlet’s thinking is so damaged by what has been done to her by her mom and others that it’s hard to feel hope for her.
Even though I had some idea where things were going at times, there was a lot of information withheld, so that we have no way of figuring out what was going to happen next. While enjoying the roller coaster ride, which mostly kept going down, down, down, for Vicki, the book often felt very manipulative and frustrating to me. I do think I’ll be pondering on it for a while because it’ll take some time to unravel all that we learned, some of which became clear only very close to the end of the book.
Thank you to Pamela Dorman Books, Penguin Publishing Group, and Edelweiss for this digital Advanced Review Copy.
With what we know towards the beginning of the book, I don’t trust Vicki or her memory of events. There is mention of prison and memory losses due to her seizures and the side effects of the medicines that she takes. She lives her life afraid that people will find out about her epilepsy and not want to use her as an aroma therapist and she is afraid of the dangers of having a seizure while alone or in public.
We also meet an eight year old girl named Scarlet, whose timeline starts in 2006. Scarlet is used by her drug and alcohol abusing mother, in order to help her mother commit crimes for money and anything else her mother wants. Scarlet thinks what she and her mother do are games and doesn’t realize that her mother is using her to pursue her life of crime. Eventually Scarlet’s mom is arrested and Scarlet is sent to live in foster homes, the first one horrible, the second one very good, but all Scarlet can think of is that she has been taken away from her mother and that she wants to be with her mother again.
The story is told from alternating views of Vicki in present time and Scarlet from 2006 and going forward and then eventually from the views of Vicki and Helen. None of the narrators are very reliable, Vicki because she doesn’t want to face certain things, reveal certain things, and can’t remember certain things and Scarlet because she’s young and has been raised horribly by a criminal of a mother and because she’s so traumatized by her life that she has no grasp of what is really happening in it and to her. And then there is Helen, who we know is looking for something by taking up with Vicki’s ex-husband David, but we don’t know what she wants from him or why she wants it.
Further into the book I began to really like Vicki because we learn she was an educated, hard worker, who picked her career (before her second career of being an aroma therapist) based on wanting to help others and we are allowed to understand things that happened in Vicki’s life that led her to her present day problems and worries. Scarlet is a sympathetic character too, especially because she is so young, has been used and abused by her criminal mother, because she had no one to show her what a normal, healthy life should be like. At the same time, Scarlet’s thinking is so damaged by what has been done to her by her mom and others that it’s hard to feel hope for her.
Even though I had some idea where things were going at times, there was a lot of information withheld, so that we have no way of figuring out what was going to happen next. While enjoying the roller coaster ride, which mostly kept going down, down, down, for Vicki, the book often felt very manipulative and frustrating to me. I do think I’ll be pondering on it for a while because it’ll take some time to unravel all that we learned, some of which became clear only very close to the end of the book.
Thank you to Pamela Dorman Books, Penguin Publishing Group, and Edelweiss for this digital Advanced Review Copy.