Krishna
Josh and Lydia Green have come to see Karen, the narrator. She is a marriage consultant.
Josh seems to be the reluctant partner in the visit They met through a mutual acquaintance.
Josh seems to sneer at everything Lydia says and Lydia seems so unsure of herself. Karen is puzzled and tries to probe the hidden reasons for the marriage trouble, trying not to jump to conclusions at the initial impressions formed. Josh is a doctor working in a hospital.
The story pivots between multiple points of view.
Karen herself seems to have had problems in her life. Josh is the sneering kind and Lydia seems to be afraid of him, at least to Karen.
It is all a bit boring with speculations and at the end of three sessions, there is very little we learn about the couple. Yes, more is revealed but in a very slow fashion.
Karen keeps remembering snippets of her own troubled past. Her dead child, her abusive husband and seems to project them in the couple she is seeing.
The story is more annoying than gripping. For instance this is supposed to be told in the point of view of three people alternatively - Josh, Lydia and Karen. They all feel the same. In addition, for every utterance and every minute, Karen keeps thinking either of inane matters that are commonplace in relationships or about what happened in her life. Yes, all this could be made incredibly tense but the narrative powers fail the author so it looks like the jottings of an average marriage counsellor who is not terribly good at her job. And is boring.
She worries about someone sending her messages on her phone. She keeps phoning her daughter in Australia for help but does not want to ‘bother her’. Just incredibly pointless at times.
The book cover advertises ‘an explosive twist’ or something like that and I am instantly suspicious when the book has to self advertise in this way, rather than hitting you with it quietly - like most of Jeffery Deaver’s books - for instance The Coffin Dancer. They tend to be empty boasts normally, reserved for the likes of the two penny pulp fiction of yesteryear. But the twist in this book is more powerful for sure.
It happens when Lydia accidentally leaves her purse in Karen’s house. We learn later that even that was deliberate. Josh gets an attack of conscience and comes to confess their real story. They are not who they say they are and visited Karen on the pretext of being a married couple to exact revenge on her.
Why? That gives away the twist and I will leave it for you to read and find out.
My complaint about this is how, thinking that she is leading us up the garden path, the author goes into extremely boring details of the sessions with the couple and for every sentence Karen thinks of a psychological ‘motherhood and apple pie’ homily or else remembers something similar in her own life.
It sounds repetitive or totally pointless until the story moves an inch and then it repeats all over again.
What redeems it are little twists and in places, some sharp dialog. Alas these vignettes are too few to redeem the book.
You know what else is totally annoying, the breathless self promotion - outside of the book. This book, while not being bad, is not one of the greatest thrillers. The cover boasts of a ‘gripping psychological thriller with a fantastic twist’. It oversells and sets expectations sky high but does not meet it fully.
On top of that, right after the last page, it asks ‘Were you thrilled? Huh? Huh? Do you want to read the next book of the author?’.
For those of you who grew up with Universal Cartoons, it reminds me of Cester, the breathless sidekick of the bull dog Spike, which jumps all around admiring Spike. Annoying to say the least.
4/10
= = Krishna