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impyI need to rant about the latest book I finished and since I try not to spoil EVERYTHING in my GR reviews, I'm gonna have to do so here.
Borrowed The Other Mrs. by Mary Kubica from Libby last week since I needed a book to read for my lunch breaks and all my holds failed me. Woe. This one sounded interesting, y'know? Family moves to a spooky house in Maine following the death of a family member and some... issues back home. A neighbor mysteriously dies and things at home start to go downhill very fast. Intrigue!
Yeah. No. This thing is damn near 700 pages via Libby and it spends way too much time trying to build suspense and get you wondering WTF is going on, thereby missing the moment it should've jumped in and started actually trying to kick things off properly. Since it misses that mark, what should've been a mystery becomes a mystery of why the fuck these people are so goddamn awful.
You've got Will and Sadie, the parents, their kids Tate and Otto, and Will's niece, Imogen. Imogen comes with the house, as Will and Sadie are tapped to be her guardians after Imogen's mother, Alice, kills herself in the attic of the aforementioned spooky house on a tiny island in Maine. We learn that Will's basically the househusband who is a professor at a nearby university, but whose hours line up perfectly with taking care of young Tate. Will's the emotionally available parent and Sadie's the aloof doctor who basically had to be dragged to Maine, even after something happened back in Chicago that made it so that her practicing medicine again there wasn't bloody likely.
You also get chapters from Camille, Sadie's former roommate who met Will first, and Mouse, a little girl with a terrible stepmother and a clueless father.
The murder mentioned is their neighbor Morgan, who was found by her stepdaughter.
The book wastes little time in setting up Sadie as the world's most unreliable narrator, as she's missing entire chunks of time, has conversations with people about things she's sure she's never said or done, and in general could not scream "this is either a terribly plotted evil twin thing or we're doing DID, bitches!"
I have never wished for a terrible evil twin scenario so hard in my life.
Obviously I did not get my wish, as narratively it only makes sense to have Sadie suffering DID and not realize it. And by sense, I mean that's the route chosen and all things must work around this even if in reality I don't see how someone who pinpoints her health reactions so precisely would not figure out that, if nothing else, she's truly missing chunks of time and that's a concern.
But nope, we're going with one of the twists of the book being that Camille is an alter of Sadie's. By the time this twist comes, it's all been spelled out and by the time the "all but" scene comes, it's been hinted so much that I would like to speak to everyone who found this to be an actual twist. Seriously, if this isn't your first rodeo with DID (or its previous names), you have no excuse to not have gotten it.
I might allow a few more people to be ~shocked~ by Mouse being another alter, but only a few people. There were only three choices for her, and one makes no sense at all (just a random red herring, essentially), and the other would have no time for a proper payoff (having her be Morgan's stepdaughter and having Morgan really be truly awful)... which leaves the obvious and correct answer: having her be the emotional turning point for what caused the DID to start. Woo.
Sadly, Mouse is the most likable character in the entire book, and nearly all of her chapters are painful in the extreme to read due to the child or pet abuse. Sooooooooo...
Let's deal with the kids:
Tate is a little kid and he's basically there to guilt Sadie and be cute, I guess. He's not unlikable I just don't care.
Otto is a ghost for much of the story and it's not until the reader has realized we're definitely doing the DID storyline that he shows back up and has any real importance to the story. Prior to that we find out that at his old school he brought a knife to school, didn't use it on anyone, and insists that his mother was the one to pack the knife in his bag and also was the one who cooked up his revenge on the bullies plan. Sadie assumes Otto's throwing her under the bus because maybe he actually did say something to her and she just didn't take it seriously enough to remember, let alone act on. A+ parenting there, Sadie and Will. We're gonna circle back here, though.
Imogen starts the book as openly hostile to Sadie and maybe just life in general, which tracks because she's dealing not only with her mother's suicide, but with finding the body and now having a strange family move into her home and take over her mother's role, even if only slightly. Not once is therapy discussed for Imogen until more than halfway through this slog of a book, and even then I think that's only after we find that Imogen took a picture of her mother's dead body (and shows said picture to Sadie). SERIOUSLY, WHAT THE FUCK. The girl is clearly hurting and instead of getting her the help she so obviously needs, Sadie's out here accusing her of every bad thing that happens around the house. If you genuinely think the kid is writing "DIE" on your windshield, maybe look into therapy?
Then it turns out that Imogen didn't just find her mother's body... she found her mother, with a suicide note, in the attic trying desperately to work up the courage to kill herself and put herself out of her own misery due to fibromyalgia. Imogen confesses that she knew how miserable her mother was, how she'd scream and cry due to the pain and the lows of depression when a promised miracle medication failed to be of any real help... and so she helped her mother end her life and then running down to her room and screaming to avoid having to hear her mother die above her. Sadie's like "wtf,you could've just as easily called 911 and gotten her help" instead of focusing on the immediate problem in front of her: Imogen's in tears and clearly broken by what she's done and needs help. Sadie cannot get over herself long enough to truly try and help her niece. And this is pretty much how Sadie reacts to most people. She may not be fully lacking in empathy but good god is she dangerously low on the stuff. Sadie later also directly benefits from Imogen's ability to dig deep and take action while other people would still be waffling on the spot.
It's weird to think of Morgan's murder as a sideplot when it's directly connected to everything else but it feels like a subplot, particularly Sadie's weird investigation of sorts. She's convinced the husband did it, even though he was literally out of the country. Then she's convinced the first wife did it, and is so convinced she steals this woman's keys, uses them to get into the car and use the GPS to find out where home is, and then takes the keys to this woman's house and snoop around. Which is all actually standard fare in mysteries but this goes nowhere, really, and just feels so very out of place.
Back to Otto before we complete our twists: Otto confronts his mother, who is thinking this poor kid's a goddamn murderer even though we're never given a reason as to why Otto would kill Morgan, and when Otto spells out exactly what Camille did (helped plot the murder of Otto's classmates/bullies) and how she laughed and joked about it, I wanted to shake the shit out of this kid. I get it, we don't know how often Sadie lapsed into Camille or Mouse (or anyone else), but I cannot see any 14 year old who wouldn't think twice about their parent encouraging them to KILL, literally KILL, their bullies. We're given nothing about Sadie that would make anyone think this is really her, and while I get that Otto's not likely to put the pieces together, he should be able to figure out that a) this is wrong and b) this is not like mom.
Sadie offers a shit apology involving the old "I'm sorry IF I hurt you" thing. That's not an apology and we all know it.
To complete our twists: Will knew Sadie was Camille and Mouse AND he'd manipulate her into switching because honestly, he liked Camille better. Also, he'd use Camille to kill people, including Morgan, who threatened his way of life. Morgan was the little sister of his first fiancée and she realized that Will had something to do with Erin's death. And by something to do with, I mean he flat out killed her because she'd fallen for someone else and he couldn't handle it.
He tries to kill Sadie and Imogen saves her and they all live happily ever after due to fucking therapy and Will being behind bars. I'm not entirely sure Sadie herself wouldn't have wound up in custody of some sort given that her body actually killed Morgan's, even if Will wound up her most unstable side to carry out the deed, and then cleaned up afterwards but that's pretty much the least of this book's problems.
I shouldn't be able to guess pretty much every twist before they happen because you spent too long getting to the goddamn point. Sadie's lack of empathy is never brought up as an actual character flaw and I think it's because it's not seen as one. The closest we get is that people think she's aloof, but that's said to be because she loses chunks of time. How the fuck did she get to practice medicine if this was a thing? I know there's a brief mention of how things got worse at one point, but since she was Camille when she met Will originally, it's not like she wasn't dealing with this as she'd have been building up her reputation.
The fact that SO many people gave this glowing reviews baffles me.
Borrowed The Other Mrs. by Mary Kubica from Libby last week since I needed a book to read for my lunch breaks and all my holds failed me. Woe. This one sounded interesting, y'know? Family moves to a spooky house in Maine following the death of a family member and some... issues back home. A neighbor mysteriously dies and things at home start to go downhill very fast. Intrigue!
Yeah. No. This thing is damn near 700 pages via Libby and it spends way too much time trying to build suspense and get you wondering WTF is going on, thereby missing the moment it should've jumped in and started actually trying to kick things off properly. Since it misses that mark, what should've been a mystery becomes a mystery of why the fuck these people are so goddamn awful.
You've got Will and Sadie, the parents, their kids Tate and Otto, and Will's niece, Imogen. Imogen comes with the house, as Will and Sadie are tapped to be her guardians after Imogen's mother, Alice, kills herself in the attic of the aforementioned spooky house on a tiny island in Maine. We learn that Will's basically the househusband who is a professor at a nearby university, but whose hours line up perfectly with taking care of young Tate. Will's the emotionally available parent and Sadie's the aloof doctor who basically had to be dragged to Maine, even after something happened back in Chicago that made it so that her practicing medicine again there wasn't bloody likely.
You also get chapters from Camille, Sadie's former roommate who met Will first, and Mouse, a little girl with a terrible stepmother and a clueless father.
The murder mentioned is their neighbor Morgan, who was found by her stepdaughter.
The book wastes little time in setting up Sadie as the world's most unreliable narrator, as she's missing entire chunks of time, has conversations with people about things she's sure she's never said or done, and in general could not scream "this is either a terribly plotted evil twin thing or we're doing DID, bitches!"
I have never wished for a terrible evil twin scenario so hard in my life.
Obviously I did not get my wish, as narratively it only makes sense to have Sadie suffering DID and not realize it. And by sense, I mean that's the route chosen and all things must work around this even if in reality I don't see how someone who pinpoints her health reactions so precisely would not figure out that, if nothing else, she's truly missing chunks of time and that's a concern.
But nope, we're going with one of the twists of the book being that Camille is an alter of Sadie's. By the time this twist comes, it's all been spelled out and by the time the "all but" scene comes, it's been hinted so much that I would like to speak to everyone who found this to be an actual twist. Seriously, if this isn't your first rodeo with DID (or its previous names), you have no excuse to not have gotten it.
I might allow a few more people to be ~shocked~ by Mouse being another alter, but only a few people. There were only three choices for her, and one makes no sense at all (just a random red herring, essentially), and the other would have no time for a proper payoff (having her be Morgan's stepdaughter and having Morgan really be truly awful)... which leaves the obvious and correct answer: having her be the emotional turning point for what caused the DID to start. Woo.
Sadly, Mouse is the most likable character in the entire book, and nearly all of her chapters are painful in the extreme to read due to the child or pet abuse. Sooooooooo...
Let's deal with the kids:
Tate is a little kid and he's basically there to guilt Sadie and be cute, I guess. He's not unlikable I just don't care.
Otto is a ghost for much of the story and it's not until the reader has realized we're definitely doing the DID storyline that he shows back up and has any real importance to the story. Prior to that we find out that at his old school he brought a knife to school, didn't use it on anyone, and insists that his mother was the one to pack the knife in his bag and also was the one who cooked up his revenge on the bullies plan. Sadie assumes Otto's throwing her under the bus because maybe he actually did say something to her and she just didn't take it seriously enough to remember, let alone act on. A+ parenting there, Sadie and Will. We're gonna circle back here, though.
Imogen starts the book as openly hostile to Sadie and maybe just life in general, which tracks because she's dealing not only with her mother's suicide, but with finding the body and now having a strange family move into her home and take over her mother's role, even if only slightly. Not once is therapy discussed for Imogen until more than halfway through this slog of a book, and even then I think that's only after we find that Imogen took a picture of her mother's dead body (and shows said picture to Sadie). SERIOUSLY, WHAT THE FUCK. The girl is clearly hurting and instead of getting her the help she so obviously needs, Sadie's out here accusing her of every bad thing that happens around the house. If you genuinely think the kid is writing "DIE" on your windshield, maybe look into therapy?
Then it turns out that Imogen didn't just find her mother's body... she found her mother, with a suicide note, in the attic trying desperately to work up the courage to kill herself and put herself out of her own misery due to fibromyalgia. Imogen confesses that she knew how miserable her mother was, how she'd scream and cry due to the pain and the lows of depression when a promised miracle medication failed to be of any real help... and so she helped her mother end her life and then running down to her room and screaming to avoid having to hear her mother die above her. Sadie's like "wtf,you could've just as easily called 911 and gotten her help" instead of focusing on the immediate problem in front of her: Imogen's in tears and clearly broken by what she's done and needs help. Sadie cannot get over herself long enough to truly try and help her niece. And this is pretty much how Sadie reacts to most people. She may not be fully lacking in empathy but good god is she dangerously low on the stuff. Sadie later also directly benefits from Imogen's ability to dig deep and take action while other people would still be waffling on the spot.
It's weird to think of Morgan's murder as a sideplot when it's directly connected to everything else but it feels like a subplot, particularly Sadie's weird investigation of sorts. She's convinced the husband did it, even though he was literally out of the country. Then she's convinced the first wife did it, and is so convinced she steals this woman's keys, uses them to get into the car and use the GPS to find out where home is, and then takes the keys to this woman's house and snoop around. Which is all actually standard fare in mysteries but this goes nowhere, really, and just feels so very out of place.
Back to Otto before we complete our twists: Otto confronts his mother, who is thinking this poor kid's a goddamn murderer even though we're never given a reason as to why Otto would kill Morgan, and when Otto spells out exactly what Camille did (helped plot the murder of Otto's classmates/bullies) and how she laughed and joked about it, I wanted to shake the shit out of this kid. I get it, we don't know how often Sadie lapsed into Camille or Mouse (or anyone else), but I cannot see any 14 year old who wouldn't think twice about their parent encouraging them to KILL, literally KILL, their bullies. We're given nothing about Sadie that would make anyone think this is really her, and while I get that Otto's not likely to put the pieces together, he should be able to figure out that a) this is wrong and b) this is not like mom.
Sadie offers a shit apology involving the old "I'm sorry IF I hurt you" thing. That's not an apology and we all know it.
To complete our twists: Will knew Sadie was Camille and Mouse AND he'd manipulate her into switching because honestly, he liked Camille better. Also, he'd use Camille to kill people, including Morgan, who threatened his way of life. Morgan was the little sister of his first fiancée and she realized that Will had something to do with Erin's death. And by something to do with, I mean he flat out killed her because she'd fallen for someone else and he couldn't handle it.
He tries to kill Sadie and Imogen saves her and they all live happily ever after due to fucking therapy and Will being behind bars. I'm not entirely sure Sadie herself wouldn't have wound up in custody of some sort given that her body actually killed Morgan's, even if Will wound up her most unstable side to carry out the deed, and then cleaned up afterwards but that's pretty much the least of this book's problems.
I shouldn't be able to guess pretty much every twist before they happen because you spent too long getting to the goddamn point. Sadie's lack of empathy is never brought up as an actual character flaw and I think it's because it's not seen as one. The closest we get is that people think she's aloof, but that's said to be because she loses chunks of time. How the fuck did she get to practice medicine if this was a thing? I know there's a brief mention of how things got worse at one point, but since she was Camille when she met Will originally, it's not like she wasn't dealing with this as she'd have been building up her reputation.
The fact that SO many people gave this glowing reviews baffles me.