Book Review: SO I LIED

Title: So I Lied

Author: Chelsea Ichaso

Publisher: Thomas & Mercer

Pages: 300

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

Rich Jocelyn Elliott, and middle class Rowan Castillo and Cadence Fletcher have been close friends since high school. Over the years, however, they have moved on, busy in their own lives. Rowan is a single mother, raising her child, now eight, after the death of her boyfriend, Jake Elliott, Jocelyn's twin. 

Now that Jocelyn Elliott is engaged to be married to Landon, her long-time beau, she decides to treat her two besties to an exclusive bachelorette party at the bed and breakfast run by her aunt and uncle in a small village in Wales.

There they meet Magnus from Norway and Valentina from Argentina, two backpackers who draw the three women into their circle. Soon Jocelyn, Rowan and Cadence are convinced that there is something off about their two new friends. They wish they had never come to Wales and encountered them. 

The trip, meant to bind them closer, ends up fraying their friendship. By the end of the trip, will the consequences be much worse? 

The book begins with the death of one of the two women, and the other two friends and the aunt and uncle of Jocelyn seemingly distraught. The novel is told from the 1^st person present tense PoV of the three women, in flashback, describing the events that took place in their lives before they got to this point, before breaking into single chapters on what transpires after the death of one of them.

At first, I could not tell the three accounts apart, but as they revealed more of their secrets, I got a better understanding of who they were. But the voice wasn’t very clear. I had to keep checking back to the first page of the chapter to find out who was talking. After the first set of three 1^st person accounts, the writing got marginally better.

The voices of the characters were still not apparent though. And because no one character stood out, I found it hard to like any of them. The thought of one of them dead was not something I could bring myself to care about.

I felt that the last first-person chapter of the character that is about to die should have been in the 3^rd person. In the first person, it was awkward and clumsy.

What made it interesting at first was that everyone had secrets, not just the women, but all the characters, but over time even that lost its novelty.

The men, Jake Elliott and Landon, are flat as cardboard. For one, neither is present in Wales, and we see them both only in flashbacks. Jake has been dead eight years when the story begins, and the flashbacks don’t portray him well or enough. Landon, very much alive, is boring. It is hard to see why he is considered quite the catch.

There was no buildup to the mystery. The red herrings were unconvincing and the plot twist didn’t seem natural. The reasons why a particular character was suspected and then subsequently considered innocent didn’t seem credible.

DI Collins, the investigating officer, was drab, completely devoid of personality. She was in charge but didn’t appear to have the confidence to figure things out. She kept asking questions but didn’t come to any conclusion at all. The odd thing was that it seemed as if she were conducting the investigation on her own. She didn’t have an assistant, no one with whom she could think aloud.

The friendship between the girls didn’t come across as warm and comforting. At one point, Rowan said that that Jocelyn provided her a sense of safety in high school and college. But safety from what? We never get a sense of what might be threatening Rowan.

The book needed better editing. Character A tells Character B her (B’s) mother’s name, in the vein of “Your mother, X.” Editing should have weeded out such clumsy sentences.

It is unclear why Jocelyn calls her mother’s sister by her first name, instead of calling her Aunt Helen, particularly when Helen’s husband is addressed as Uncle Paul.

 

The book was okay for the most part. But the resolution fell flat. It seemed forced, hurried, with characters coming to realisations about the truth in a way that didn’t feel natural. 

 

 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.) 

Book Review: MISSING IN FLIGHT

Title: Missing in Flight

Author: Audrey J Cole

Publisher: Thomas & Mercer

Pages: 285

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐

At first glance, this book reminded me of the Jodie Foster film, Flightplan, where Foster’s character, flying home with the body of her husband who was killed in combat, wakes up from a short nap only to find that her daughter has disappeared from the plane, mid-flight, and no one has even seen her. But this book wasn’t a novelization, so I was curious to see how this one would turn out.

Makayla Rossi is flying from Hawaii, where her father lives, to New York, her home, when an hour or so into the flight, she returns from a trip to the bathroom to find her baby, Liam, missing from his crib.

Because Makayla’s mom, famous actor of the yesteryears, Lydia Banks, died in an accident caused after the sudden onset of Transient Global Amnesia, the FBI investigators, the crew and other passengers believe that Makayla is confused and that she might have contracted the same disease. Also, no one has seen her board with the infant. Nor has anyone seen or heard the infant.

The only person who believes Makayla is her brand-new best friend who is providing her support via text from New York.

Meanwhile, back in New York, Jack’s boss, Lionel, has trapped him into taking the fall for a lot of fraudulent activity on his own part. Lionel’s daughter, Sabrina, who is Jack’s childhood friend, is threatening to tell Makayla about a one-night-stand that never happened.

 

The book was written in the 1^st person present tense PoV of Makayla, Anna, the co-pilot, Tina, the FBI officer, and Jack. Anna's story is completely unconnected with that of Makayla, and was unnecessary. Instead the PoV of another passenger on the flight might have been more helpful. Most of the action takes place aboard a flight from Hawaii to New York, and simultaneously at other locations during the same period.

The premise, a missing infant on a flight, is strong and tugs at our emotions, and the image on the cover, a frayed seat beat, is a nice touch, but the pace in this book flags with the many flashbacks and the constant repetition. For a large part of the book, not much seems to be happening. Some of the flashbacks, as when Makayla’s mother, Lydia, teaches her how to ski, were completely unnecessary. The fact that Lydia loved her daughter was completely irrelevant to the story of Liam’s disappearance.

Once the baby is taken, there is no escalation in the conflict, no call for ransom, nothing. The stakes just don’t get higher. 

This was more women’s fiction than thriller. A big part of whatever thrill there was came from the weather conditions and the turbulence.

The resolution raised a number of questions and wasn’t properly explained.

The investigation lacked lustre.

Ultimately, this one didn’t hit the right spot for me. 

 

   

 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.) 

Book Review: NEVER TELL

Title: Never Tell

Author: Liv Constantine, Loreth Anne White, Andrea Bartz, Rachel Howzell Hall, Ivy Pochoda and Caroline Kepnes

Publisher: Amazon Original Stories

Pages: 281

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

Never Tell, an Amazon Original Stories collection, was mostly interesting. The collection of stories by multiple authors plays on the theme, How well do we really know the people we love? Each story in this collection played on the theme, some better than the others.

Most of the stories are first person accounts of women written by women. Only the fifth story is written in the third person past tense.

 

EVERYWHERE YOU LOOK by Liv Constantine

Jade, a 28-year-old nurse, suddenly sees her father, the father who died ten years ago, on a busy street. She is about to kill herself when the sight of her father causes her to change her mind.

The story, written in the first person present tense PoV of Jade, begins in the present, then goes back in time to a month earlier, before counting down to a week earlier, when she gets evidence of boyfriend Benedict cheating on her, and then onward until the present day.

The story was well-written, and it was packed with secrets and revelations, but it wasn’t really all that tight or impressive. Partly because there were far too many revelations and they were revealed at such a fast pace that we got no time to process them individually, making it all seem unreal. There was no sense of danger at all. Nor any villains either. The sole baddie was rendered ineffectual. A non-starter of a story, but a quick read. The Benedict subplot was a joke.

 

THE GHOST WRITER by Loreth Anne White

Grace Logan, a widow, still broken after the death of her husband, Andy, is invited to Blackwood Island, the private estate of infamous horror novelist, Claudia Blackwood. Her task: to write Claudia’s memoir. Claudia has lived her entire life under the shadow of accusation. As a teen, she was accused of killing boyfriend Jacques Duvalier, his little brother, Danny, and classmate Jill Wilson, with whom he was cheating on Claudia.

A professional ghost writer, Grace could be assured of success if she were to succeed at this project. But it’s not going to be easy. Other ghost writers, it seems, have died while at work on the project. Grace has a feeling she might be in real danger.

The story is written in the first person present tense PoV of Grace. The book conjured an eerie sense of atmosphere. The setting, descriptions, dialogue, internal monologue were all on point. The names add to the mystique. There is Grace. The chauffeur is called December. Kharon, the ferryman, like the ferryman who leads the dead in Greek mythology.  

There was a great twist at the end.

There were some errors though. A few pages in, Claudia’s name changed from Blackwood to Blackwell, then changed right back to Blackwood again. This change is seen even a few paragraphs apart on the same page.

 

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STREET by Andrea Bartz

I liked this one the most. It was the only one with a twist that took me by surprise.

Kelsey and Lauren, married lesbians, have bought their first home. Kelsey is expecting their first child. Life couldn’t get any better.

Hank, their neighbour, who lives on the other side of the street, gives Lauren a creepy vibe. It’s the beginning of their troubles.

Hank was creepy from the get-go. He was the classic neighbour from hell. My heart was hammering as I read this story. It certainly upturned all my assumptions.

 

SCORPIONS by Rachel Howzell Hall

Francesca dropped out of Cal Poly to look after her depressed, alcoholic mother. Now, fresh out of a job as a nurse’s assistant after her 80-year-old client died, she has a deadbeat job as a diner waitress to look forward to.   

Ruben, her dead client, leaves her a note pointing out the whereabouts of $1 million that he stole in his youth and hid in an underground mine. The trouble is that in two weeks, the place will be swarming with people as demolition and construction crew work to build a casino in its place. Plus, the key to the safe is with Ruben’s son, Shane. Then Jocelyn, Ruben’s ex-wife, but not Shane’s mother, joins in.

Shane warns Francesca not to trust Jocelyn, but is he trustworthy himself? Or are they all out to double cross one another?

This one was a slow burn. At first, not much seemed to be happening, then suddenly it went boom, escalating at a tremendous speed. Unfortunately, the story should have ended with the climax. The Epilogue made me feel cheated. I wish the author hadn’t worked this ending in. It didn’t give me the closure I wanted after investing in Francesca.

 

JACKRABBIT SKIN by Ivy Pochoda

Skin Swan, a tattooist, moves to a friend’s container house in Miracle, Wash., an isolated desert town, after her marriage ends. There she meets Kurt, a man who lost his wife three years ago.

Soon after Lucinda, a town luminary, tells her she’s not welcome in Miracle, and Skin wonders if she made a mistake coming here. When Kurt asks her to tattoo a photo of him and his wife on his left shoulder blade.

Slowly the desert, and Kurt, grows on her. Until she becomes suspicious that he may have had a part to play in his wife’s death.

This one was a rich read, with evocative descriptions and good writing.

 

THE BAD FRIEND by Caroline Kepnes

It’s hard to encapsulate the plot of this short story but I’m going to try.

The book is written in the second person, which is rather tricky to pull off.

Ellen and Tanya, best friends since they were ten, become estranged after Ellen’s engagement with Troy. Ellen, missing Tanya deeply, tries to lose herself in her relationship with daughter, Abigail, but Abigail develops a friendship with best friend, Josie, who turns out to be the daughter of Ross, Tanya’s boyfriend, back when the girls were friends.

While Ellen and Tanya remain estranged, an unexpected meeting after decades spills the beans on how baseless have been all the beliefs that Ellen has spent nearly a lifetime holding on to.

 

What I liked about this story was the author’s way of jumping forward in time. It was masterfully done.

I would have preferred the ending to be less vague, more certain. 

 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.)