Take a photo of a barcode or cover
ellieb_reads 's review for:
She's Not Sorry
by Mary Kubica
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Okay, so this is hard to rate. About 200 pages in, I considered DNFing and wrote out my complaints. I’ve said it in my reviews before, but I don’t need my thrillers to be really elevated writing. I have a pretty low bar for that in whodunnits as long as they keep me entertained and reading. But the writing here (the dialogue especially) was so off that it was continually taking me out of the story - which had thus far been good, but not good enough for me to ignore what was irritating me. BUT THEN this book goes bananas. I flew through the final third of the book, which definitely tipped the scales back in its favor.
Because I nearly DNFed, I’m still going to explain my problems with the writing. Chiefly, the dialogue is just reeeeally bad. For example, in one scene our main character is asked how she met her ex-husband during a casual conversation with a friend over wine. Her answer: “To this day I still think about the way our hands brushed by accident against each other and how, somewhere in the middle of the empty parking lot, I pulled shyly back, but Ben reached for me in the darkness, taking my hand into his, holding it.” NO ONE TALKS LIKE THAT OUT LOUD. This is not bad writing per se; if this had been the narrator’s internal monologue, that’s fine. But all of the dialogue read so weirdly formal and prose-y, and it drove me bonkers. This one is more minor and probably personal, but there is a bizarre amount of description about the narrator walking. There are paragraph-long descriptions of the narrator turning left or right/heading east or west and repeatedly naming the specific streets (all of which I recognize because this book is set in my exact neighborhood in Chicago).
All of that said, it was completely worth powering through the weird writing. The plot in this book was awesome, the twist completely got me, and the ending was just wild. All of the characters are suspicious, and main character Meghan’s anxiety jumps off the page and makes this very suspenseful. So, very long review short, a weird 3.5 stars for me.
Because I nearly DNFed, I’m still going to explain my problems with the writing. Chiefly, the dialogue is just reeeeally bad. For example, in one scene our main character is asked how she met her ex-husband during a casual conversation with a friend over wine. Her answer: “To this day I still think about the way our hands brushed by accident against each other and how, somewhere in the middle of the empty parking lot, I pulled shyly back, but Ben reached for me in the darkness, taking my hand into his, holding it.” NO ONE TALKS LIKE THAT OUT LOUD. This is not bad writing per se; if this had been the narrator’s internal monologue, that’s fine. But all of the dialogue read so weirdly formal and prose-y, and it drove me bonkers. This one is more minor and probably personal, but there is a bizarre amount of description about the narrator walking. There are paragraph-long descriptions of the narrator turning left or right/heading east or west and repeatedly naming the specific streets (all of which I recognize because this book is set in my exact neighborhood in Chicago).
All of that said, it was completely worth powering through the weird writing. The plot in this book was awesome, the twist completely got me, and the ending was just wild. All of the characters are suspicious, and main character Meghan’s anxiety jumps off the page and makes this very suspenseful. So, very long review short, a weird 3.5 stars for me.