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bonnybonnybooks 's review for:
You're Invited
by Amanda Jayatissa
This was wobbling at three stars - it was rather slow but I appreciated the view into Sri Lankan culture - but then the ending went off the rails, not in a fun way.
Amaya is a poor little rich girl from Sri Lanka. Her mother defied her family to marry a white man, who quickly abandoned her and their child for the family he had back in the U.K. After her mother died, Amaya was mainly raised by her housekeeper. Her best friend growing up was the even wealthier Kaavi. For some reason five years ago the two had a falling out. Now Amaya cyberstalks social influencer Kaavi, using sock puppet accounts to like Kaavi's posts.
Then Kaavi suddenly announces her engagement - to Amaya's college boyfriend. Amaya surprisngly receives a wedding invitation and is determined to attend and prevent the marriage from taking place. The book opens with the implication that Amaya has murdered Kaavi, which was how she had planned to stop the wedding all along.
Amaya is a frustratingly annoying character. Her only interesting aspect is that she is obsessed with lucky numbers, constantly looking at the clock or for other numbers to indicate that it is an opportune time to act. Everything else about her was the worst, especially Amaya's frequent imagining of the violent ends of anyone who annoys her. These aren't even intrusive thoughts - she seems to relish in the imagined blood and gore. This appears to be an attempt to make Amaya more supsicious so the reader believes she really did kill Kaavi. All it does is make Amaya look like she needs therapy. Jayatissa also tries to make Amaya sympathetic by having her be the only Sri Lankan of her social class to give lip service to the belief that servants are people too. I notice that authors give their narrators class consciousness as a pet-the-dog gesture, but it is entirely performative. It's just a way to show they're morally superior to the other characters, without them taking any actual action.
It was also never clear why Amaya and Kaavi were ever friends. Supposedly Amaya used to be the wild child and Kaavi was the shy one, and now Amaya is a shell of her former self and Kaavi has bloomed into a diva. So they had somewhat of a personality swap. But there was no sense their personalities ever meshed. Kaavi turns out to be even more awful than Amaya, which was the one surprise in this book.
I still liked the Sri Lankan setting and the Sri Lankan characters. I'd be willing to give Jayatissa another shot - this is no worse than most thrillers I've read and Jayatissa may just not have hit her stride yet.
And now for those ending spoilers:
Amaya didn't kill Kaavi (of course!). Amaya's plan had always been to stop the wedding by telling Kaavi the truth about her fiance, Spencer (of course!). Kaavi's adopted younger sister is actually Amaya's child by Spencer (of course!!). Spencer was an abuser, and Amaya had to flee from him (of course!). Spencer is also a pedophile (what?!?). Spencer turns out to be a broke grifter. Spencer blackmails Kaavi into going through with the wedding because he has photos that her father had sex with another man. Kaavi & her mother decide to kill Spencer and pin the blame on an ex-employee who Kaavi had incorrectly gotten fired (!) meaning he lost his health insurance and his wife died of cancer in a public (poorly funded) hospital (!). Kaavi's back-up plan if she couldn't manipulate the poor ex-employee into being the apparent culprit was to frame Amaya instead (so much for this book being about female friendship). And then it turns out that Kaavi's mother had killed a boy while Kaavi was in high school because it would have been a scandal if it came out that Kaavi was sleeping with him while he was dating Amaya. Frankly, Kaavi turning out to be a psychopath makes it make EVEN LESS SENSE that she and Amaya were supposedly besties growing up. And then everyone gets a happy ending. Amaya's trauma is healing and she is off to LA, Kaavi and her mother are going to continue to be rich and untouchable in Sri Lanka, everyone is happy except me, the reader.
Amaya is a poor little rich girl from Sri Lanka. Her mother defied her family to marry a white man, who quickly abandoned her and their child for the family he had back in the U.K. After her mother died, Amaya was mainly raised by her housekeeper. Her best friend growing up was the even wealthier Kaavi. For some reason five years ago the two had a falling out. Now Amaya cyberstalks social influencer Kaavi, using sock puppet accounts to like Kaavi's posts.
Then Kaavi suddenly announces her engagement - to Amaya's college boyfriend. Amaya surprisngly receives a wedding invitation and is determined to attend and prevent the marriage from taking place. The book opens with the implication that Amaya has murdered Kaavi, which was how she had planned to stop the wedding all along.
Amaya is a frustratingly annoying character. Her only interesting aspect is that she is obsessed with lucky numbers, constantly looking at the clock or for other numbers to indicate that it is an opportune time to act. Everything else about her was the worst, especially Amaya's frequent imagining of the violent ends of anyone who annoys her. These aren't even intrusive thoughts - she seems to relish in the imagined blood and gore. This appears to be an attempt to make Amaya more supsicious so the reader believes she really did kill Kaavi. All it does is make Amaya look like she needs therapy. Jayatissa also tries to make Amaya sympathetic by having her be the only Sri Lankan of her social class to give lip service to the belief that servants are people too. I notice that authors give their narrators class consciousness as a pet-the-dog gesture, but it is entirely performative. It's just a way to show they're morally superior to the other characters, without them taking any actual action.
It was also never clear why Amaya and Kaavi were ever friends. Supposedly Amaya used to be the wild child and Kaavi was the shy one, and now Amaya is a shell of her former self and Kaavi has bloomed into a diva. So they had somewhat of a personality swap. But there was no sense their personalities ever meshed. Kaavi turns out to be even more awful than Amaya, which was the one surprise in this book.
I still liked the Sri Lankan setting and the Sri Lankan characters. I'd be willing to give Jayatissa another shot - this is no worse than most thrillers I've read and Jayatissa may just not have hit her stride yet.
And now for those ending spoilers:
Spoiler
Amaya didn't kill Kaavi (of course!). Amaya's plan had always been to stop the wedding by telling Kaavi the truth about her fiance, Spencer (of course!). Kaavi's adopted younger sister is actually Amaya's child by Spencer (of course!!). Spencer was an abuser, and Amaya had to flee from him (of course!). Spencer is also a pedophile (what?!?). Spencer turns out to be a broke grifter. Spencer blackmails Kaavi into going through with the wedding because he has photos that her father had sex with another man. Kaavi & her mother decide to kill Spencer and pin the blame on an ex-employee who Kaavi had incorrectly gotten fired (!) meaning he lost his health insurance and his wife died of cancer in a public (poorly funded) hospital (!). Kaavi's back-up plan if she couldn't manipulate the poor ex-employee into being the apparent culprit was to frame Amaya instead (so much for this book being about female friendship). And then it turns out that Kaavi's mother had killed a boy while Kaavi was in high school because it would have been a scandal if it came out that Kaavi was sleeping with him while he was dating Amaya. Frankly, Kaavi turning out to be a psychopath makes it make EVEN LESS SENSE that she and Amaya were supposedly besties growing up. And then everyone gets a happy ending. Amaya's trauma is healing and she is off to LA, Kaavi and her mother are going to continue to be rich and untouchable in Sri Lanka, everyone is happy except me, the reader.