Dark Places

Source: Barnes & Noble

Dark Places is a 2009 thriller by Gillian Flynn, whose other works are Sharp Objects and Gone Girl. It was published by Shaye Areheart Books. It was listed on the New York Times Best Seller List for fiction within a month of its publication date. The New Yorker named it one of the best books of 2009. Roughly six years later, a move adaptation starring Charlize Theron was released.

The summary of the book is as follows: Libby Day was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in the “The Satan Sacrifice” of Kinnnakee, Kansas. She survived, and later testified that her brother Ben was responsible. Twenty-five years after the murders, a group of true-crime fans contacts Libby and invites her to meet with them so they can question her for details. Many don’t believe Ben was the murderer and are searching for evidence that will clear his name. Libby, meanwhile, has fallen on hard times and hopes to make some quick cash off of the family tragedy. She makes a deal with the club, she’ll start looking for answers and report what she finds to them, for a fee. As her search takes her around the Midwest, some painful truths resurface and she finds herself once again on the run from a killer.

The narrative unfolds in two timelines. One timeline shows Libby’s journey in the present, digging into the truth of what happened that night and reconnecting with some of the others who may have hidden the truth years earlier. The other timeline is the story of what happened in the past, depicting the 24-hour period leading up to the murders. The perspective of the “past” chapters shifts between Libby’s mother Patty and her brother Ben. Patty’s chapters show the desperate situation the family was in financially before the murders and her desire to simply help her family. Ben’s POV chapters add dimension to his character and explain a few of the decisions he makes that are pivotal to the mystery at the center of the story.

While having a story, more specifically a mystery, being told in two timelines can be beneficial, I don’t think that style works as well as it could have in Dark Places. Given that the reader already knows what happens in January of 1985, there’s plenty of detail that could be omitted without effecting the plot. We already know Patty and two of her children are killed. We know Ben is arrested for the killing. Having two timelines is a solid tactic for introducing red herrings or revealing previously unknown facts, without having an exposition dump, but it isn’t used very effectively here. There is an entire subplot that unfolded in 1985, which revolves around 15-year-old Ben being accused of a crime, that serves as a rather heavy-handed red herring and I would say it has no real impact on the story as a whole if it didn’t further Patty’s narrative about trying to keep the family farm together. There was potential in Dark Places, but that potential wasn’t fully realized.

The novel is well-written, Flynn’s prose is fantastic as it is in all of her works. She does an excellent job of making the reader sympathize with, or in the very least like, characters that shouldn’t be likeable. Ben allegedly killed his family. Libby is using, and has used, the deaths of her mother and sisters to make money. There is a club called The Kill Club that’s fascinated by true crime to the point that not only do they decide to investigate murders for themselves, but they contact survivors and relatives of the victims, which is bound to reopen old, and painful, wounds. None of these characters should make you want this novel to have a fulfilling conclusion, an intriguing answer to the mystery, but thanks to Flynn’s writing chops, you do.

Let’s discuss the conclusion for a moment. As the novel’s premise suggests, and some earlier parts of this review imply, Ben was not the person who killed his mother and sisters. I know that is a spoiler, but it’s a spoiler that shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone. Television, films and literature have all taught us by now that if someone’s looking into a case after its been solved, the police caught the wrong person. The reveal of Patty’s real killer’s identity is underwhelming in my opinion. It isn’t an out-of-nowhere reveal, but there also aren’t quite enough clues sprinkled through out that tease or foreshadow the ending. In fact, the few clues that exist led me to a much different, and darker conclusion. Something that really bothered me about the truth of what happened didn’t relate to Patty’s death, but the deaths of the two daughters. The motive behind Patty’s death is clear in hindsight, and teased beforehand. The same isn’t true regarding the two daughters, Michelle and Debby. They die for different, and much worse reasons. My biggest criticism about the revelation, however, lies in how it happens as an act of chance. A character says something, reveals information they shouldn’t know, and that’s how the murder is solved. After reading 316 pages of what happened right leading up to the murders, and Libby trying to solve the murders, the whodunit is revealed when a character lets the wrong thing slip out. It’s not a bad way to have the revelation happen, it just doesn’t fit with this story.

Despite how critical I may seem, I enjoyed Dark Places. It was a well-written, intriguing story. Not my favorite of Flynn’s but that’s in no way a point against it. Dark Places, in my mind, is at a disadvantage, because I will compare every novel of Flynn’s against Gone Girl, and this novel, unfortunately, doesn’t stack up quite as well. It’s a good book, but one I found to be a little boring. It’s a quick read, and perfect for a day sitting on the beach or to enjoy on a plane or train. I would definitely read it again.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Behind Closed Doors

Source: Amazon

Behind Closed Doors is a 2016 novel by B.A. Paris. It was published by St. Martin’s Griffin and was both a New York Times and USA Today bestseller. According to the description, it is a “psychological thriller you can’t miss!”

The novel focuses on Grace and Jack Angel. He’s a well-respected attorney focusing on domestic violence victims, while she’s a homemaker. From the outside they seem to have it all. As a tagline on the cover asks however, is this the perfect marriage or the perfect lie? Obviously, with a question like that posed, the answer becomes obvious. Things with the Angels are far from perfect, Jack is not the benevolent attorney, dedicated to saving women from their abusers that he seems to be. The novel centers around Grace trying to figure out what to do about her husband and how to remove herself, and her vulnerable sister Millie, from his sphere of influence.

The narrative unfolds in two timelines: past and present. This shows how Grace meets Jack and they get together while also contrasting it with the life she’s now living. The first chapter, which depicts a dinner party the Angels are hosting, does a fantastic job of filling the reader with a sense of doom and dread. Within a few pages, Grace’s actions and behaviors reminded me of The Stepford Wives. She’s the perfect hostess, the perfect cook, dinner goes down without a single mistake or flub, but at the same time, there’s an underlying fear of what would happen if dinner wasn’t perfect, if she wasn’t the charming hostess. I don’t like using other works to describe a feeling I get, but Stepford Wife was the only way I could describe it. Any work that invokes that comparison instantly gives the impression that either something is about to go horribly wrong, or it already has.

While the beginning creates a sense of dread, once it becomes clear the secret that’s being kept, the rest of the suspense drops off until the climax of the story. The tension in the first few chapters isn’t carried forward as effectively as I would’ve liked. Grace’s desperation is well-crafted and as the story progresses, the feeling of helplessness convinces the reader, or at least this reader, that she might not be able to get away. I’m not sure if I would quite qualify it as a thriller, mostly because there isn’t enough suspense. The actions of Grace and Jack propel the story forward, as opposed to a building up of tension.

As I alluded to earlier, and as the novel makes clear, Jack is hiding a huge secret. I will admit that the secret Jack hides and his motives aren’t quite what I predicted they might be when I read the synopsis of the book, I didn’t completely miss the mark. I went into the book expecting Jack’s secret to be that he’s a domestic violence attorney who, ironically, beats his wife. I expected him to be an abuser who hides behind the façade of someone advocating for abuse victims. That isn’t what his secret is, but he chose his profession deliberately and it isn’t to help others. Another thing I did not expect was the importance Millie, Grace’s 17-year-old sister with Down Syndrome, played in the story. She ended up being a much more important character in the conflict than I anticipated. Millie is smart, she’s resourceful and, despite her dislike of George Clooney, which has a purpose in the story, she’s a good character. Behind Closed Doors is one of the few books have read that has characters with Down Syndrome or another developmental disability that are well-written and multifaceted.

Now, it’s time to discuss some parts and elements that I wasn’t a fan of. There are two chief complaints that I haven’t touched upon yet. One is relatively minor, another related to a huge aspect of the story and plot. My minor complaint is about clichés in this type of work. It’s a psychological drama about the relationship between two people. As an easy way to show that Jack is a psychopath, and how psychopathic he is, he gets Grace a puppy and later kills it. This is the fourth book I’ve read this year where the first sign that the abusive or psychotic husband is abusive or psychotic is that he kills the dog. It does prove Jack’s a monster, but there were plenty of other, more creative, less obvious ways, to show that. Now, to my main complaint, Jack is apparently a supergenius, or psychic. By the time Grace learns the truth about him, he’s already planned for any and every possible contingency to make sure she can’t leave. Even events that are seemingly out of his control, he’s accounted for. The narrative shows only Grace’s perspective, so some aspects might be amplified for dramatic effect because she’s so scared, but his ability to predict any and everything that could happen gets a little annoying. Another thing I found incredibly frustrating is the fact that no one questions his behavior about certain things. No one apparently finds it weird that Grace can’t even go to the bathroom in a restaurant unless he waits outside the door for her. Not every character dismisses it, but far too many chalk it up to them being “so in love”. That behavior, and everyone’s dismissal of it, is part of why Grace is so desperate but it isn’t realistic in the way some of his other behavior is.

The central story is compelling. The twists and turns the story takes are also worth complimenting. Jack is a one-dimensional evil man, but that’s all he needs to be. Grace and Millie are both well-rounded and while I didn’t have a great opinion of Grace at first, as the story unfolds, her behavior had me saying “you’re an idiot, just leave” less and understanding her actions more. Behind Closed Doors is a great book, it’s not a fantastic one. I would recommend it but I don’t see myself gushing about it or insisting that everyone I know read it immediately.

Rating: 3.3 stars

One of Us is Lying

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One of Us is Lying is a young adult novel by Karen M. McManus. It was published in 2017 by Random House. Everyone I know who has read it describes the premise as “The Breakfast Club” meets “Pretty Little Liars” which is a pretty on the nose depiction. The book can be purchased here from Bookshop.org.

The non-spoiler-y summary is as follows: On a Monday afternoon, five students, a brain, a beauty, a criminal, an athlete and an outcast, walk into detention. An hour later, only four walk out. Simon, the outcast and the creator of a gossip app about the school, dies during detention. It’s soon revealed that his death was no accident. The four students in detention with him are the prime suspects and everyone has a motive. More people wanted Simon gone than didn’t.

What unfolds is a complex murder-mystery taking place in a modern high school. One of the strongest points of the book, and the most appealing, is this backdrop of a suburban high school. Unlike traditional mystery novels, a la Sherlock Holmes, the investigation takes place in our time. Simon’s death gains national attention and the investigation unfolds surrounded by, and impacted by, the 24-hour news cycle and the current trend to sensationalize everything. It’s on national news, a 48 Hours-like television program does a piece on the murder while its being investigated. The plot isn’t just impacted by news sources; there’s the added perspective of social media and the role it plays in hew news spreads and how stories are covered. It becomes clear, with some minor characters, that the death doesn’t matter much to them, but the attention the story gains is what they care about.

The novel unfolds through alternating point-of-view segments of the four suspects: Bronwyn (the brain), Addy (the beauty), Nate (the criminal) and Cooper (the athlete). While I’m not always a fan of narratives with alternating POVs, it works extremely well here because it gives the reader a chance to see the murder, and its aftermath, from more than one perspective. Not only does this provide possible motives for every character, but it also allows the reader to understand why a particular character wouldn’t have killed Simon. No one character is presented as being squeaky clean or obviously guilty. While the characters are all archetypes common in media aimed at teenagers, they aren’t one-dimensional, which is refreshing for the reader and adds depth to the story.

One of my favorite aspects of this book is how the characters’ lives are changed by this common event. Others become immediately suspicious of them, but that’s not the only outcome of Simon’s death. The murder, the investigation, the press coverage, the four students trying to solve what happened leads to each individual coming to some kind of realization, whether its about self-acceptance or getting a toxic person out of their life. The murder investigation is obviously a huge plotpoint, and their lives may never be the same, but smaller problems arise, less important details come to life. Despite the fact that they’re all suspects, and that each character only knows their truth about what happened, they are brought closer together by this event and try to work together to determine what exactly happened.

Now, let’s discuss the plot without spoiling the ending. I enjoyed the death itself, mostly because it posed an interesting mystery. Simon doesn’t get shot or stabbed. There isn’t a power outage and when the lights turn back on, he’s dead on the floor. He dies, everyone in the room sees it, but no one’s able to figure out what happened. How he died, and how the killer is able to kill him, is just as compelling as trying to figure out who did it. The revelation of how Simon died, and who killed him, is equally compelling, and unlike some novels, the answer doesn’t come out of nowhere, nor does there need to be an extensive amount of exposition given, for it to make sense. It also isn’t glaringly obvious up front who’s involved with what happened.

While I find McManus’s novel great overall, I do have some minor complaints. A few of the secrets the main four characters want to keep hidden are a bit cliché or overdramatized. Some of that could be chalked up to teenagers having heightened emotions, and everything feeling like a huge deal in high school. Simon, our murder victim, has plenty of enemies and people who aren’t sad to see him die which feels a little bit of a cop-out, but that could just be me. There were a few scenes in the book where a character’s actions seemed a bit over the top or their words didn’t sound like something a normal person would say. Again, this is just my opinion but those scenes kind of took me out of the story a little bit. I found the treatment of one character after her secret gets out, because of course the secrets are revealed, was a little heavy-handed but I’m also picky about the specific topic it covered. My dislikes are mostly related to small details, and not major aspects to the story.

Rating: 4 stars

The Power

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What would happen if, one day, women developed the ability to emit electricity from their fingertips? How would politics and society change as a result of women gaining a power over men? What happens when the powerful find themselves suddenly powerless, and women become the physically dominant gender? These questions rest at the center of The Power by Naomi Alderman. Spoiler alert- the answer isn’t the utopia we’d all like to believe would occur. The novel can be purchased here from Bookshop.org.

The Power is written in a “book within a book” format. It’s framed as a historical novel written by Neil Adam Armon (an anagram of Naomi Alderman’s own name) which he’s sent to a friend to read and review. Having been written 5,000 years after an event called the Cataclysm, it chronicles what happens in the ten years before the Cataclysm that led to the event and society being rebuilt as a matriarchy after the dust settled.

One day, women and post-pubescent girls across the globe develop the ability to electrically shock others with a simple touch, to the extent of being able to electrocute a person if desired. What starts out as a rare ability soon develops into nearly all women having the power. With women now having a power, things soon transition into having most of the power, and the changes that comes with it. Men are no longer the gender to be most feared. Some men aren’t willing to relinquish power and some women feel like comeuppance is in order.

The Power’s concept I found fascinating when it was first suggested to me. Rather than a story about a world without men or a world where humanity was always a matriarchal society, it depicts how modern society would react to a change from patriarchy to matriarchy. It’s also a novel that becomes more difficult to read as things escalate. When the women’s power first becomes known, changes are minimal, and familiar to many female readers. Boys and men are advised not to travel alone or at night. They learn to become much more aware of their surroundings. Things most women today take as common sense. As things progress, tensions escalate and some go overboard now that they have power. As one very poignant line in the book states:

It doesn’t matter that she shouldn’t, that she never would. What matters is that she could, if she wanted.

Alderman depicts, in a stark lighting, why a woman-run world would not and could not be the utopia others might argue it would be, and does so realistically. Men wouldn’t willingly give up power, especially in less developed parts of the world. Women who have suffered all their lives at men’s hands, likewise, wouldn’t gain superiority over them and not attempt to get revenge. Men made women suffer, and now women will make men suffer. It shows that it isn’t sex that makes the powerful do terrible things, it’s the power itself. Alderman weaves a descriptive, even at times horrifying, narrative showing this transition, and the extremes both sides will go to for their agenda.

The aspect of this work I liked most was the way the story unfolds. It begins ten years before the Cataclysm, when the power is first discovered, and each section of the book brings the reader closer and closer to the day the Cataclysm takes place and reveals how this world-ending event came to be. The progression of these events is told from multiple perspectives throughout the book:

• Allie- A troubled teen who discovers her power and, following a confrontation with her abusive foster father, runs away to convent. She becomes a religious figure known as Mother Eve, whose significance becomes amplified in the world post-Cataclysm
• Roxy- One of the first women to discover her power. She attempts to use it to save her mother, unsuccessfully and strives to get revenge. She crosses paths with Mother Eve while trying to grow her power. She’s shown to be the physically strongest wielder of the power, wile Mother Eve is the most skilled at using it.
• Margot- An American politician who was often overlooked by her male colleagues. She advocates for girls to be trained on using their powers. Men fear the training camps she establishes are precursors to creating a militarized force of female soldiers. Her daughter, Jocelyn, develops the power early and struggles to control it.
• Tunde- The only male POV character in the novel-within-a-novel. He is the first person to capture a video of the women’s newfound power. This leads to him becoming a freelance journalist and traversing the globe to report on uprisings as women in male-dominated countries begin uprisings.

These characters’ stories all converge in Moldova just before the Cataclysm. Explaining why and how each character ends up there would spoil significant elements of the individual stories and the narrative as a whole. My favorite thing about these characters is that no one character is the “hero”. Every character exists in the grey area and while some began with good intentions, those get warped.

The Cataclysm isn’t shown, nor its immediate aftermath. The novel ends with Neil, the fictitious writer 5,000 years post-Cataclysm, and Naomi corresponding back and forth about his novel. This is the only glimpse we get of the world after the Cataclysm, and the questions that are brought up sound somewhat familiar.

How much stock should be put in history books about what happened centuries ago? How much information was lost because of personal biases? To what extent should biology define us? Lastly, is the power structure we occupy and the society we live in “natural”? Are we capable of better? Do we simply choose not to be better?

Rating: 4.5 stars

In A Dark, Dark Wood

“In a dark, dark wood, there was a dark, dark house. And in the dark, dark house, there was a dark, dark room.” This theme is common among most horror and thriller stories going back generations. We are told from an early age that the woods and dark places are scary and that we should avoid them. A remote house in the middle of dense woods is the setting for In A Dark, Dark Wood. In A Dark, Dark Wood is a 2015 thriller/mystery novel written by Ruth Ware. It quickly became a New York Times bestseller and was named one of the best books of the year by NPR.

Source: Simon & Schuster

The premise of the book is this: a reclusive writer names Leonora, Nora to her friends, is invited to a hen do, or as its known in the US a bachelorette party, by her friend Clare. Given that she hasn’t seen Clare in ten years, she’s shocked and a little confused that she’s been invited. She somewhat reluctantly agrees to attend. The event is being held at a remote house in the woods owned by a relative of one of the bridesmaids.  As the weekend progresses, it soon becomes clear that not everything is as it seems and the group may not be alone in the woods. Someone may not make it out of the woods alive.

The story is very much told in two parts. There are the events of the bachelorette party and the events that take place after. Someone dies and the “after” storyline depicts the police trying to determine what exactly happened, along with the narrator. The transition back and forth can be a little jarring, but it prevents the reader from learning too much information at any one time.

The writing is pretty good with Ware doing a noteworthy job building suspense as time goes on. The book isn’t badly written, the plot makes sense, and the reveal doesn’t come out of nowhere. If anything, the opposite is true. My criticism comes from two fronts. Predictability and a reliance on convenience.

First, predictability. I was able to accurately guess who the killer was early on. Most of the characters are archetypes that serve a single purpose. It’s clear, once the characters are gathered together, who the killer is and who the "fake-out" murderer is. The character that’s set-up to seem like the killer is painted early on as a nervous wreck, so it becomes clear that person isn’t the killer, due to how obvious it seems. The only thing that I didn’t predict was a detail about Nora’s backstory that is only terribly important as it relates to the killer’s motive. Nora’s backstory is focused on a little too much and, in the end, it exists to make the motive seem more legitimate. There’s nothing wrong with a story being predictable, I was just hoping for more.

The plot relies a lot on convenience. Lenora is in a car accident after the murder, which means she doesn’t remember what happened. The unreliable narrator angle is why the dual storylines work, but the decision to have an unreliable narrator, and the reason why she’s unreliable, is still incredibly convenient. The way the victim ends up at the house is based entirely on convenience. The murder was planned, but how it happened cycles back to one or two very specific events that could've gone differently, preventing the murder altogether. Patterns of behavior are ignored until they suddenly become relevant when the plot needs them to. I understand the need for convenience and red herrings, but there comes a point where the story is too reliant on coincidence.

I read this book on the beach and I liked it, but I wasn’t thrilled by it. It didn’t blow my mind like many others have. I suppose my biggest gripe with it is that there was potential for a compelling story, but it never manifested. The setting in the middle of the woods never gets taken full advantage of. I picked up the book expecting a supernatural thriller or even just a creepy thriller. I didn’t get that. Instead, it was a fairly by-the-numbers murder mystery without that much actual mystery.

Overall rating: 2.5 stars