A wheel-spinning waste of time

I’ve been on a ‘thriller’ kick recently, because I’ve been needing to keep my brain engaged while I’m nursing my three-month-old. These “next Gone Girl”s seem to be sitting well, because they’re mostly interesting enough that I want to keep reading them even when I’m tired and brain-dead. (When I’m all the way tired, though, I’m doing a Dorothy Sayers reread. That’s a lot of fun, and I know the stories well enough that my brain can gloss over bits and I don’t lose out!) 

The Widow is one such thriller advertised as the next Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train, supposed to be “an electrifying debut thriller that will take you into the dark spaces that exist between a husband and a wife.”

Jean has never spoken much about the crime her late husband was accused of committing, but now that he’s dead, more pressure than ever is on her to speak out about the secrets in their marriage. Can reporter Kate Waters persuade her to say what really happened to missing baby Bella? Was her husband involved?

Honestly, the answer to those above questions? Who cares.

I hated this book.

I hated its poorly-written dishrag main character, I hated her motivations or lack thereof, I hated her dead husband, I hated the vaguely-sketched reporter trying to get a story out of her, I hated what passed for the plot twists, I hated that I had figured out the ‘mystery’ on page 15 and I hated that I read the whole thing.

It’s just not very interesting. The characters are thinly drawn, the entire plot is telegraphed early on and the writing isn’t good enough to make up for it. It made me want to just reread Gone Girl and call it a day.