And Then She Was Gone

  

 

I have to say this before I start my blah-blah: how many similar books are there?
Authors Christopher Greyson, Luca Veste, Rosalind Noonan, Lorhainne Eckhart, J. Daniel Sawyer, to name a few, have a book with the very same title. When I looked for the cover, I found two different covers for the one book by Lisa Jewell. Needless to say, confusing!
This is the kind of things that won't help readers find the book or recognise it!

 

It's a gone-girl story, you guessed right. It was entertaining, and I found myself wanting to understand what happened, wanting to not predict the plot as I went along, and let the book take me where it wanted. At times, when my lips pinched, I would wonder how what I was reading would make sense in the final climax. 

Things that I found plausible:

• The crazy looser of a tutor, undermined and craving recognition from other people, while never giving herself an ounce of self love. The premeditation, the obsession with every single step. Yes, it works.
  

• The kidnapping. We saw it in The Lovely Bones (if you're interested, the screenplay is here), -- and I think Ellie, the kidnapped girl in Lisa Jewell's story, has read the book, as it is mentioned at some point -- Indeed, it is easy to take the wrong decision in a split second. There are many ways Ellie could have avoided her terrible fate, but she walked into that darn house.
  

• The new love, why not? Up to a certain degree, maybe 10 pages in, I thought it could just be fine. I thought Lauren, despite her ramping cynicism, could find love again. Why not? She does not look like she deserves it much, but, hey, who am I to judge?
  
  
• The note in the second hand book. Yes, that can be. A friend of mine came to Thailand because of her brother's unexplained death, and as she was buying second-hand books, she found a book with a note in her brother's hand-writing. So, yes! I do believe!
  
  

Things that made me cringe: 

• The cousins, nephews, whatever... The woman disappears and her relatives move in? She was estranged but they somehow find the keys and just decide to call it their home? OK, granted, had they not been there, we would not have seen the gloomy cellar, Laurel would not have found the lipgloss, but still, the interaction with those guys was a bit like the hair in the soup.
  
  
• The pregnancy. Mfff! Really? That was weird. Imagining Noelle going in there and... How? I mean why? I mean... Eeww!
  
  
• The hamsters? I know they don't require a lot of care, and they eat each other, which simplifies the abandonment situation. But, hamsters? Really?
  
  
  

What I liked

I liked the title at first but then realised it had been over used. I had a personal wishful expectation that Ellie was going to be alive in the end.

What I did not like

Well, first of all, the fact that -- even though it would have been super cliché -- Ellie did not escape. That sucked! She was intelligent, she would have overcome the trauma of miraculously being a teenage Mum with therapy etc. I had it all worked out...

I really really really (really!!) disliked the changes of point of view. I am so tired of this, seriously. I get invested and then, bam! I have to go and inhabit someone else's mind. After a couple of chapters of this back and forth dance, I stopped caring. Check it out: we were juggled in the skins of Laurel, then Ellie, then Noelle, then Floyd, on repeat. Come on, people! That's like four different books in one! Why? I could have managed if I had liked the book enough and with only two points of view max, (see Five Feet Apart), but in this case, I became annoyed. Laurel did not find out some elements (why Ellie, how Poppy was conceived, how Ellie died...), because we already knew it from another point of view. She was left guessing it out from the clues she got. All she knew for certain, through a note left in a book, is that Ellie, despite the horror of her situation, was fine and loved everyone (until her bitter end or not, Laurel will never know). How is this enough?
A mother would need to know everything to get closure, woudn't she? Inheriting her lost child's look-alike should not be enough, in my opinion.

The difference in the love Laurel has for Ellie and her two other children bothered me. Is it because Ellie went missing? Would she have also been distant to Ellie if she had grown up with them? Do parents have a favorite kid in the family. Argh! That bothers me! Laurel never went the extra mile to support them like a Mum should. OK, she was traumatised, but I did not read anything to prove a super bond between Laurel and Ellie in the opening chapters. So, I did not care much for Laurel.

The end felt rushed. It seemed to me that it concluded like the movie would. We've got our ending, kill the bastards, wrap it up and "The end!". Anyway, at that point, I was grateful for the liberation.  

Then She Was Gone is not a book I would read again, Still, happy I did, so I know what all the rattle is all about.
Happy readings!

In Five Years

 

You know the way they ask you the question at job interviews. I always wonder what they expect to hear: "In five years, if all goes well, I'll have your job, dude"? 

Anyways, I thought the book would be like that. We'd see her now, and we'd see her then. She will have grown, she will have changed, something will have happened to her... Why did I think that? you ask, simple. The book title promised it: In-5-Years!

Of course, I read the blurb on Scribd before downloading the book, and got a bit of what I expected. Here is what it said, taken from Rebecca Serle's website:

Perfect for fans of Me Before You and One Day—a striking, powerful, and moving love story following an ambitious lawyer who experiences an astonishing vision that could change her life forever.

I have not read or watched Me Before You or One Day but I know what is a  striking, powerful, and moving love story and that was not it. And the misleading an astonishing vision that could change her life forever is probably the reason why I got this book in the first place. I wanted a vision, I wanted a life being changed.

Let me tell you this right now: it is NOT a love story and there is no life-changing vision. It's a book about friendship, where Dannie's best friend, Bella, is slowly dying of cancer, about spending the last months with a dear one dying prematurely. 

It's got a weird premonitory dream stuff that has no rhyme nor reason and could have easily been cut off and why was it not? It leads nowhere, it's absolutely unrelated to the plot. So why is it even there? 

What I would have found acceptable:

• It could have been a book about friendship, full stop. I probably would not have liked it either. I found the characters too common. Dannie is super-lawyer, cold and purpose-guided, with her entire life planned ahead of her without any room for fun or excitment. Bella is just her antithesis, creative, no goals, no agenda, bla-blah-blah. 

• It could have been a book about cancer and dying, suffering. It could have had loads of details of the treatment and what not. Yet, it did show us how Dannie dealt with it and how Bella dealt with it. How Bella's parents dealt with it. How her boyfriend dealt with it. But, come to think of it, why did it show us all this, as this is all unrelated to the story too, with it being a love story and all.
  

• It could have been a book about magical premonition and Dannie following it and deciding to throw it all away, to live "da life", comparing her dull routine to Bella's more exciting life and deciding to seize the day, you know... Captain-oh-my-captain style! 

• It could have been a book about lust. She could have been madly in love with Aaron, torn between her attraction for him and her affection for Bella. They could have decided if his name was Greg or Aaron once and for all and put us out of our confusion.
  

• And finally, it could have been a book about love. I could have become more invested in the two main characters of the love story, Dannie and... what's his name? See, I don't even remember, as he's like a vase on a table, a painting on the wall. He's nowhere, we see him in between doors, and waiting at diner tables, he has minty-fresh morning breath and makes coffee in 25 seconds. Apart from that, he is spineless, existing only by his lack of interest. 

What I liked

The title. This is a cool one! It let me imagine what the book should have been about. It was appealing.  
Easy read and I liked that Rebecca took us to a lot of coffee places around NY. Oh, and I had no idea there was such a thing as a White fish bagel.

What I did not like

The storyline with unecessary parts and characters.
The predictability of the two female characters' interactions. I could not care for them as I would have liked to. They appeared to me like magazine covers, glossy, made up and artificial.
The transparent male characters, who ended up not being useful, if you ask me.

Finally, here is what I would have changed:

• Greg/Aaron: give up the name duality. Who cares? 
  
• The wet dream: completely scratchable.
  
• Bella's parents' drama: is the book about Dannie or about Bella? Why is this struggle important?
  
• Give the "perfect" boyfriend something to say, give him a voice, for crying out loud!
  
• Why did she have to have sex with Aaron at the end? 
• Why did I have the vision of the doctor as an old man?
  

At last, people, don't take my word for it, and read the book. I am an audiobook fan, so run on over to Scribd and happy reading!

The Wife Upstairs, read and blah

 

Rachel Hawkins is American and she was a teacher too, at some point, before focusing on her writing career. What a fantastic path! I love that! That she could eventually focus on what she loves doing for fun.

I read the Wife Upstairs without realising it was a Jane Eyre's spin-off. Once I finished the book and stayed with my mouth twisted, wondering What? I read everywhere what I apparently should have known from page 1, but I did not. I did not recognise the Jane Eyre of my childhood with her ill friend, hardship, hopes and dreams. I did not find anything that reminded me of the classic Charlotte Brontë novel.

What I did get was the desperate housewives atmosphere, the desdain for all other human beings, and the indifference that plagued all of these characters. I did not like anyone, any of these people. They were all unlikeable.

I read critics calling this novel a revelation of 2021. To me, it wasn't. I was really waiting for someone to show a good side of their psyche, I was hungry for someone to become likeable. I was longing for that revelation I felt I was promised. But sadly it did not happen. Isn't one of the main aspects of a good book to have the reader identify with one character? Like or hate them? Or at least care for them, feel with them?

Publishers Weekly calls it a page turner. I turned the pages alright, hoping to get somewhere interesting.  So, yes, I turned and turned and read this quickly, hoping to get to a more juicy tale but ending up disappointed. I was promised unbelievable twists, but to my liking the twists fell on their faces, as they did not live up to my expectations.

Here is a list of the 4+1 characters and what I understood: 

JANE: ok, she has Jane Eyre's first name but that's about all. She is unpleasant, dishonest, jealous. She lives with a guy that she dislikes and who knows her "secret". See, when she was living with her foster family, the father (an abusive slob with a heart disease) was having a heart attack or something and she did not give him his medicine. No one was there, no one saw this, no one cares and she has been in hiding since then, even changed her name and what not. She wants to marry out of envy, for her own benefit. It works out for her and she somehow weirdly inherits a fortune, which makes absolutely no sense, since she did not even marry the guy she inherits from and knew him for about a minute. She spends her days disgusted about what she does not have and trying to steal it, whether it is material or not. She is unlikeable, but I could not hate her either. She is just shallow and mean spirited in a lazy way. To me, she is without a purpose. 

EDDIE: could have been the poor dude who gets played, but he was not in the end. He was undecided. It would have been different if he turned out to be violent, murderous, manipulative. But instead, he was just there, not knowing what to do or why he was doing it. Another shallow character who was neither here nor there in his development. He controlled nothing, seemed to understand nothing. Even his money was not the fruit of anything he achieved. He went in and out of the house without really taking any decision. He reminded me of a supporting character in a Sim's game.

BEA: lived her life envious of her supposed to be best friend, Blanche, whom she disliked anyway. She slept with Blanche's husband (whom she disliked too) because she saw a look exchanged between her husband and Blanche (OMG! What is she? 15?). She orchestrated Blanche's murder and as one could expect, it all went downwards after that. She killed her because she suspected that Blanche suspected that she killed her mother, because when her mother (a raging alcoolic, whom Bea disliked too (see any pattern here?) died, Bea was alone in the house with her (OMG! Seriously?).

BLANCHE and TRIP: the dead best-friend who literally resurfaces to spin the sad tale, and her husband, framed for her murder. I believe Tripp was the only weird and weirdly believable character for me. He seemed like a normal guy in the way that he drowned his sorrow in alcool. Other than that, we find out that his love story was also as unpleasant as anything else in the book.

What I liked

The title, yep! There was a wife upstairs!
The fact that it was on several recommendation lists of the books to read in 2021. I felt like I was belonging to my era.
I liked that I got it hot from the press and finished it in less than a week. 

What I did not like

The cursing, could have done without it.
The dynamics between the characters, as in: where is it? 

Finally, I am left wondering about too many plot holes. For example: 

• What is the deal with the John guy? How does he have cause for blackmailing Jane? Her secret is not even a secret.
  
•  What is the deal with Eddie, trying to play the big rough mafia guy with John? I really thought there was something there, but no... Just another weak plot mis-twist. 
• And again, Bea's "secret", seriously? I mean there is massive tension build up that ends up in puffs of smoke as the characters disappoint and are not even proper evil in the end. OK, Bea managed to kill Blanche, but she had hated her almost all of the time.
  
• The end: completely unrealistic. The entire playout was weird and uneasy. It started out ok when Jane finds Bea. I was expecting something cool to happen then, but then it was just a succession of hits and misses. Jane frees Bea, then they hang around and chat away while Eddie (the genius!), sets the panic room on fire. How? And why didn't Bea try this trick herself in the past year? The house burns down (duh!). Bea runs to save Eddie... Why? Where does this make sense for a calculating diva to run back in the fire once she is free from her cubicle prison? Love? Really? 

Rachel is a YA writer and I think this transpires in The Wife Upstairs. Adults need bigger drama than "there was a look!" or "I hate that guy but he gives me a room in his house, so..." or "I killed her because I thought she thought that I did..." 

I am happy I read this book,  because, as I said there was a lot of noise about it. Now I know and I have my opinion on the topic.

Happy reading!