You Are Not Alone by Greer Hendricks, Sarah Pekkanen
My rating: 3/5 cats
fulfilling my 2020 goal to read (at least) one book each month that was given to me as a present that i haven’t yet gotten around to reading because i am an ungrateful dick.
this is a bit of a cheat, because while it WAS a gift (thanks, michelle ! ♥) it is a gift of < a week, so it hasn’t been sitting here triggering my molten-guilt core for very long. don’t care, ppbbbllltt!
three and a half in my heart, review to come!
******************************
okay, here it is: THIS BOOK: is it fun? yes. is it a fast read? absolutely. is it…convincing? weeeeeeelllll…
but hey—when it comes to these kinds of twisty psychological suspense page-turners, satisfaction doesn’t necessarily depend upon plausibility; you suspend your disbelief and get swept away in the author’s (or, here—authors’) imagination; their ability to conceive a plot that deceives the reader with interlocking clues and red herrings jenga’d up into a pleasing puzzle that logic would only dismantle.
and if a book is twisty enough, it’s okay if you predict some of its surprises. and if some of the steps in the extended cat-and-mouse scheme rely too heavily upon coincidence or a character’s preternatural ability to anticipate every variable or accurately predict the actions/reactions of multiple individuals despite having only just met them, well—stop poking the jenga!
i read The Wife Between Us and i was pleasantly surprised. i bought-in-hardcover-but-haven’t-yet-read An Anonymous Girl, so i’m only able to compare this one to their debut, and while it wasn’t as sparky, i was never bored. if the breed standards are that it entertain, then ✓. keep the reader guessing, ✓. deliver reasonable explanations, ✓-ish. resolve itself adroitly? no. nuh-uh. chapter sixty-eight would never ever happen. ladies, please. there are two of you. that’s TWO chances to say “let’s get some more paper and try again.”
overall, it was enjoyable without being groundbreaking or memorable. sometimes you’ll get to the end of one of these and be so mind=blown that you immediately go back through to marvel at all the clues ya missed and the cheeky misdirections, and YOUR LIFE IS CHANGED FOREVER.
this is not one of those books.
but it’s a fun temporary escape and if you are quarantined—grab a stack of books like these and several bowls of candy and hunker down for as long as this takes.
WASH YOUR HANDS!
read my book reviews on goodreads
