Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough
My rating: 4/5 cats
some years back, i was at BEA with greg, and we were on line for something or other, and he’d wandered off to a nearby booth while i held our place. there was a gaggle of librarians behind me in line, and the boy-librarian was holding court, impressing all the girl-librarians* with his game of thrones knowledge by giving a highly detailed and booming synopsis of everything that happens in A Storm of Swords, which i had not yet read, but i knew from greg was the book with all the stuff and things. once i realized what was happening, i made the emphatic but unobtrusive clicking noise that means “come here now, please,” developed during many years of working in the bookstore trenches together, and the moment he returned to my side, i bounced outta earshot without a word of explanation.
in a perfectly executed choreography of facial expressions and ASL (which only one of us has studied, rendering it a gesture more decorative than useful), we established when it was safe for me to come back. which, for the record, was much longer than it should have taken – that nerd was on fire with detail.
i’ve since read the book and seen the show and i’m safe as safe can be from that particular spoiler-landmine, but the world is as full of twist endings as it is incautious booknerds, and with Behind Her Eyes, pretty much the only thing i knew about it was that it was ALL ABOUT THE TWIST, and OMG, and i approached all reviews of it gingerly, not wanting to tempt fate or the spoiler monster.
i succeeded, but i wasn’t, of course, able to escape the knowledge that there was a twist, which comes with its own set of reader-distractions – finding myself subconsciously squinting for clues and developing theories while reading, which i 100% did not want to do, but every time i had to put the book down for any reason, my mind would slink into investigative/analytical mode and try to work out the twist without my consent. fortunately, investigative karen is a moron, and it’s a fast enough read that i was able to push most of life off to the side and gulp this down pretty quickly, and i figured out some things, but not that half-twist jab that comes after the main twist, which was a fun “hey now!” that tied up some lingering questions, but also created new ones.
here’s the thing – in this case, the twist IS the book’s selling point. it’s a fun glossy pageturner; the book-equivalent of clickbait that sucks you right in (LGM) with its promise of YOU’LL NEVER GUESS, and YOU WON’T SEE IT COMING, and it’s an entertaining read, although peppered with implausible character behavior inspiring many “who would DO that?” eyerolls, but the momentum is all driving towards this promise of JUST YOU WAIT that, granted, delivers what it promises and is an unusual deviation from other books in this genre. however, it’s not a tightly-fitting lid, and there’s a lot left unresolved, sloppily explained, or significance overemphasized. paint color is just paint color, after all.
it’s fun fluff, but i’ll take fun over tedious any day.
* presumably.
