Others have drawn comparisons to Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train, and, being the natural conformist that I am, I’m not going to buck the trend. If you like your female mystery novel narrators on the unreliable side, this may be the book for you. Which is a weird burgeoning trope, if, indeed, three books can be considered a trope. Sometimes, a culture just decides that it’s ready for something. We all consume, basically, the same information. So its not surprising that there would be […]
Finally, an unreliable narrator who isn’t horrible
I’ve written fairly extensively about how much I dislike unreliable narrators, and how books written to damage the psyche are, I think, grotesque and antithetical to everything I want in a book. The narrator here is struggling through a fairly difficult time in her life, and therefore can’t always be relied on to objectively perceive her reality – but I think it’s handled in a way that is fair to the characters, and it’s done in service to the story, not as some cheap ploy […]
I’m late to the train.
Another Cannonball favorite finally made its way up my TBR list, and I had mixed feelings. I honestly don’t know why any reviews anywhere ever would call this book fast-paced, because the pace was absolutely killing me for the first half. Nothing happened but cryptic allusions to secrets and Rachel’s alcoholism and depression. I hated it for a while. Every time I put it down I’d feel kind of sad and crappy about life for a few hours before I finally realized that Rachel’s miserable […]
Honestly tho, what kind of donut shop only has crumb donuts
I really wanted to go for this one. It really could have worked. I honestly didn’t even mind the BIG TWIST, which, you know, when your narrator has traumatic brain damage, it’s almost like, “Of course,” when ~*~ things aren’t what they seem ~*~. I just felt very disconnected, very removed from the proceedings. Which may be a direct function of the narrator/protagonist feeling that way herself, due to her memory loss and bouts of illness keeping her out of the loop, both in understanding […]