A quick read, easy to follow (eventually, after half the book consisting of one POV, it turns into 4 different POVs which was fine since it didn’t jump back and forth much). And yes, we have one unreliable narrator, but who is it? 😉
The reviews mentioning the crazy, unpredictable twists? Ehhh… I dunno. I didn’t predict them wholeheartedly but one I had a feeling of and then promptly forgot about that feeling (even though I was eventually partially correct). In that grand scheme of things, I wasn’t all that invested in it, to keep guessing. I decided to just let the author tell me the story.
So what’s it about?
A wife is on the run after killing her abusive husband, in the midst of him strangling her, to save herself. Pure self-defense.
I want to make one thing clear. I killed him.
I’m not going to claim it was the butler or a one-armed man. I did it. I killed my husband. All I can say in my defense is I had a good reason.
Yep. At first, she’s not sure if she should stay and call the police and tell them what happened (after all, she had the bruising to prove it),
Option number one is tempting. After all, I’m already here. Inertia is powerful. And perhaps I could spin this. After all, my neighbor heard me screaming. Would anyone believe it if I told them the truth? That if Derek weren’t lying here dead, it would have been me. Him or me—that’s what it came down to.
I reach out and touch my neck. It’s still tender from where his fingers were. There will be bruises. He’s never left behind bruises before—at least not in a place anyone else could see.
…or if she should run away and stay off radar for the rest of her life, since her husband is wealthy and well connected.
A seemingly impossible fight that takes the steam right out of her, so she chooses to run.
I have no idea where I’m going.
It’s not like I did this with any kind of well-thought-out plan. I didn’t wake up this morning and say to myself, Hey, I’m going to kill my husband today! If I had done something like that, I would have filled up my gas tank beforehand, for starters.
Driving away, knowing not to use her cards at a certain point in her journey, she gets stuck in a massive snow storm, and finds a small motel, hidden away off the main roads, and they accept cash! Thinking she’s safe at least for the night and until the storm passes, she settles in, but settled… she is not.
I can’t shake this uneasy feeling that I should leave this motel right now. Grab my bag and get back on the road, no matter how hard it’s raining or snowing. This place is trouble.
But that’s silly. It’s warm and dry in here. And there’s an actual bed that I can sleep in.
It started off well enough, but I was soon annoyed at the decisions the main character made. Right off the bat, I was ready to solve her main issue, and then maybe she wouldn’t be in this predicament (and it is a dilemma, for sure). But then again, had it not all went down the way it did, I guess the real truths might not have revealed themselves in the end, so bad decisions it is!!
I just went with it.
We can’t have a fun thriller to read if the characters solve everything right off the bat, now can we? LOL! 😉
But was it that exciting? Ehhhh…. it had twists. Three of them. Maybe even 4 if we include a mini reveal, because sure… I was thinking one thing (but it would have been too obvious a comparison, and I’m happy the author didn’t “go there”). I was wrong about that part, at least.
The reasoning behind the twists, were… acceptable. But the writing style just didn’t really work for me. Light and straight forward, and maybe just too simple. Too easy. The characters? They were rudimentary. The way they spoke, the things they thought, just had that basic feel. Lacking in that real life feel or that quality, where we get attached to one or all of them, rooting for them or hating them. I felt nothing much.
I love psych-thrillers, but what makes me love them is the cleverness in the reveals. The shock and the “I didn’t see it coming!!” holy moly jaw-dropping story that comes full circle once the reveals… well… reveal themselves.
But this one just feels rushed, and over the top and… simple.
3 stars! <— Good enough for a rainy day read (I wanted to find out how it ended), but will you keep thinking about it after? Maybe. But not me.