Scan barcode
A review by mandyherbet
Until I Met Her by Natalie Barelli
1.0
Full disclosure: I skimmed the last third of this book because it was so awful. And by awful I mean self-published (I assume), two-dimensional and flat throughout. So, yes, awful. I hate-read it simply to be able to "finish" it and warn everyone else in my friends list to stay away.
Let's begin with the plot, which is actually the one redeeming feature of this book. There's a murder (or are there two murders? NOT TELLING) - Emma Fern, bestselling author and literary prize nominee has killed her best friend, author Beatrice. This is not a secret - we're told this in the first chapter so I'm not spoiling everything for you. How she comes to have killed her is the tale we're told from Emma's perspective.
Emma is a mild-mannered shop owner who comes from poverty and now lives with her super-smart economist husband, Jim, and enjoys a boring life until she meets her FAVOURITE author, Beatrice, one day in her shop. What follows is a request from Beatrice (who quickly becomes Emma's BEST FRIEND IN THE WHOLE WORLD) to pretend to have written a book by Beatrice and be her stand-in because the book is totally different to anything she's ever written and no agent will take it seriously. Obviously Emma descends into a spiral of jealousy and delusion which culminates in murder. Interesting, right?
EXCEPT all the characters are completely flat and so two-dimensional that they'll give you paper cuts. Emma is obviously unhinged from the beginning so there's no descent into delusion that would be necessary to make the day she "snaps" believable. Her husband Jim obviously detests her from the start despite the author trying to tell us that their marriage was super happy and perfect. Beatrice is so craven and rude that you actually want to reach in and throttle her and, well, the story is told in such a way that you might think you're reading the outline instead of the fleshed out book.
And this is before I even talk about the dialogue, because AWFUL. There are no words but I'll try find them: stilted like a stick man walking on stilts does not even come close. I'd come up with examples but just trust me, awful.
Let's begin with the plot, which is actually the one redeeming feature of this book. There's a murder (or are there two murders? NOT TELLING) - Emma Fern, bestselling author and literary prize nominee has killed her best friend, author Beatrice. This is not a secret - we're told this in the first chapter so I'm not spoiling everything for you. How she comes to have killed her is the tale we're told from Emma's perspective.
Emma is a mild-mannered shop owner who comes from poverty and now lives with her super-smart economist husband, Jim, and enjoys a boring life until she meets her FAVOURITE author, Beatrice, one day in her shop. What follows is a request from Beatrice (who quickly becomes Emma's BEST FRIEND IN THE WHOLE WORLD) to pretend to have written a book by Beatrice and be her stand-in because the book is totally different to anything she's ever written and no agent will take it seriously. Obviously Emma descends into a spiral of jealousy and delusion which culminates in murder. Interesting, right?
EXCEPT all the characters are completely flat and so two-dimensional that they'll give you paper cuts. Emma is obviously unhinged from the beginning so there's no descent into delusion that would be necessary to make the day she "snaps" believable. Her husband Jim obviously detests her from the start despite the author trying to tell us that their marriage was super happy and perfect. Beatrice is so craven and rude that you actually want to reach in and throttle her and, well, the story is told in such a way that you might think you're reading the outline instead of the fleshed out book.
And this is before I even talk about the dialogue, because AWFUL. There are no words but I'll try find them: stilted like a stick man walking on stilts does not even come close. I'd come up with examples but just trust me, awful.