I am currently reading a thriller which has been cried up as being "twisty, scary" and was recommended in the Sunday Times and on its cover by another crime author whose books don't appeal to me. Perhaps I should have been warned. This was a random purchase because I recognised the title. The plot is, indeed, scary but regrettably that's all I can say for the book. I could not bond with any of the characters, two of whom were depressingly similar, it was hard to tell one from the other. And it all went on and on, the hand-wringing, soul-searching, conversations which didn't do anything for the plot. I daresay I am out of kilter with what is popular in this kind of fiction. I loved Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty and I sometimes get the feeling I am reading bits of this novel when I try other work out there at the moment.
Being a writer myself, I appreciate all the hard work that goes into writing a novel and I also fully understand that reading tastes vary widely, and thank goodness they do, otherwise we'd only have one kind of book available to us. However, I have to feel empathy with the main character and if I do not feel that in the first ten pages of the story, my attention will start to falter. "They can all kill themselves for all I care" I have thought on a few occasions.
I am currently flicking through this novel but I just cannot read through another chapter. I'll keep turning over the pages and checking to see who did it and why before I drop the book off at a charity shop.
