The Kind Worth Reading On a Beach When You’re Kinda Drunk and Not Thinking Too Hard

 

 

I added this book to my audiobook queue because it was recommended that if you liked Girl On The Train and Gone Girl you would also like this. It’s also supposedly in development to become a movie, but I read that same thing about The Lies of Locke Lamora about 20 years ago, and it STILL hasn’t happened and I’m STILL angry about it.

Here’s the thing, I DID enjoy both GOTT and GG, and I can see why someone would recommend this book based on liking those, but I don’t think it was quite as effective. The basics of the plot start with Lily Kitner, who winds up sitting next to Ted Severson on a plane from London back to Boston. After a few martinis, Ted drops that he discovered his beautiful wife Miranda has been cheating on him with the contractor who is building their dream home. He bitterly remarks that he’d like to kill her, and Lily convinces him that he should. As she says at the time, she believes there are certain people, such as cheaters, who deserve to die (“the kind worth killing!”).

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DMndH8QiI4&w=560&h=315]

Shenanigans shenaniganize, twists twist, turns turn and best laid plans go awry. The fundamental reason this book doesn’t work is that absolutely no one is likeable. And you could definitely say the same for Gone Girl, except in Gone Girl at least the female protagonist is 100% devoted to being batshit. Here you just have people devoid of any morality or responsibility to other people acting without care to consequences.

There is honestly not one good person in this book, not even the side characters! All parents are absentee or alcoholics, everyone is trying to murder someone else, all the female main characters are sociopaths and all the men are womanizers. Even the random locals sitting in the bar are conniving mean-spirited gossipers. I shudder to think what general worldview the author has if he believes all people are actually like this.

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The only reason I gave this book stars is because it did successfully keep me intrigued on what was going to happen next. I was consistently disappointed that what happened was cliché nonsense or a plan so poorly thought out I assumed it had to be a red herring only to discover it wasn’t, but so it goes. Everyone in this book deserved to die, Hamlet-style. So if you’re looking for a semi-mindless beach read, and there’s nothing better in the bookstore, it’ll at least keep you entertained.