JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

Friend Request by Laura Marshall

Maria Weston wants to be friends. But Maria Weston’s dead. Isn’t she?

1989. When Louise first notices the new girl who has mysteriously transferred late into their senior year, Maria seems to be everything Louise’s other friends aren’t. Authentic. Funny. Brash. Within just a few days, Maria and Louise are on their way to becoming fast friends.

2016. Louise receives a heart-stopping email: Maria Weston wants to be friends on Facebook. Long-buried memories quickly rise to the surface: Those first days of their budding friendship; cruel decisions made and dark secrets kept; the night that would change all their lives forever.

Louise has always known that if the truth ever came out, she could stand to lose everything. Her job. Her son. Her freedom. Maria’s sudden reappearance threatens it all, and forces Louise to reconnect with everyone with whom she’d severed ties in order to escape the past. But as she tries to piece together exactly what happened that night, Louise discovers there’s more to the story than she ever knew. To keep her secret, Louise must first uncover the whole truth, before what’s known to Maria-or whoever is pretending to be her-is known to all.

Friend Request is Laura Marshall’s debut psychological thriller — it’s told in dual timelines and switches back and forth between 1989 and 2016.

In the present, Louise receives a friend request on Facebook from Maria Weston, a high school classmate who died twenty-five years ago (although her body was never found). Louise is shook, but she’s also feeling deeply guilty because of things that transpired in high school in 1989. The reader learns early on that Louise didn’t treat Maria well in school, and more importantly, Louise feels responsible for Maria’s death.

“I have lived the last twenty-seven years in the shadow of what we did, of what I did. Of course my life has carried on — I have studied and worked, shopped and cooked; I’ve been a friend, a daughter, a wife, a mother. Yet all the time, in the back of my mind, this one unforgivable act has loomed — squashed, squeezed, parcelled, but always there.”

Louise is a single mother to four-year-old Henry; she was married to her high school classmate Sam, but the two split up when Henry was two and now Sam is remarried with a new child. Things seem tense between the two, and Louise is trying to keep the relationship as pleasant as possible, but deep down she is still hurt that Sam cheated on her and then left her for the woman he was having an affair with.

This book feels very current because of how dominant social media is to the storyline. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the premise is quite absurd, but it’s still a good read. It’s still thrilling and an absolute page-turner.

I really thought I had a solid theory about the ending of the book, but I was completely wrong. I was actually genuinely surprised by the twist at the end, and in some reviews people say they saw it coming, but I definitely didn’t.

“I tend to divide the people I meet, or certainly those of my own age, into two broad categories: those who are like me, and those who aren’t. I was fascinated if a little disgusted by this new information about someone who (on my admittedly limited acquaintance with her) had seemed firmly in my category.”

There is one thing about this novel that I didn’t particularly enjoy. Every so often, there’s a chapter in the book written in italics. It’s unclear whose point of view these chapters are written from, but there’s definitely an ominous danger to them. You feel like these chapters are key to the twist at the end of the book, but you can’t quite grasp the answer. After I’d finished reading the novel, I went back and re-read these particular chapters and thought that they probably weren’t needed. I could certainly see some hints dropped in, but I felt like those italic chapters detracted from the plot and stalled the story too much.

“Some days she feels like a prisoner in her own home. There’s no reason she can’t go out, of course. Nobody could tell from simply looking at her. But on days like today, it feels as though someone has peeled back a layer of skin, leaving her face red raw, offering no protection from the elements.”

Friend Request illustrates to readers that we are actually really vulnerable online. We post all about our lives, and we allow people to see things about us that we may not choose to tell them in an everyday face to face setting. This is a chilling, engaging read but it’s also a social commentary on how much we expose ourselves online to strangers.

I’d recommend this to crime fiction fans and also anyone who has an online presence. Readers who don’t have social media may not understand some of the references, but the underlying plot of this book is the disappearance and (presumed) death of Maria Weston and I think most readers will enjoy playing the guessing game.

Thank you to the publisher for sending me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Friend Request
Laura Marshall
July 2017
Hachette Book Publishers

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She’s even started to feel like she knows them. “Jess and Jason,” she calls them. Their life—as she sees it—is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost.

And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough. Now everything’s changed. Unable to keep it to herself, Rachel offers what she knows to the police, and becomes inextricably entwined in what happens next, as well as in the lives of everyone involved. Has she done more harm than good?

This book is a lot like Gone Girl, in the sense that you get to the end of the story, and everything you thought you knew about the main character was wrong. You’re completely blindsided. And then you’re left sitting there wondering how you missed it.

At first, you’re a bit confused, because you’re trying to work out how Rachel, Amy, Megan, Jess etc all fit in together. And then you work it out and you run with it, because you want to know what happened to Megan. For a while there, you question Rachel. But you know that since she’s the main character and you’re supposed to sympathise for her, that she didn’t do anything to Megan. And Paula is able to achieve this through the realistic representation of multiple point of views. Oh, and an extremely flawed character.

Rachel is an alcoholic and is weak. She can’t give up alcohol, no matter how many times she tries. Does she even want to give it up? The reader keeps thinking it’s going to happen – we’re inclined to read a flawed character and hope that their flaws disappear over the course of the novel. But Rachel’s flaws don’t. Kudos to Paula for maintaining Rachel’s faults throughout the entire novel. This makes us question Rachel at times, and it makes us not want to like her. It makes us doubt her actions, and as a result, we grip the novel in frustration. And that’s extremely rare. It’s rare to have a main character who is more unlikeable than likeable. To be honest, I really couldn’t stand Rachel, but that’s actually because Paula is a really good writer.

The mystery surrounding Megan had me interested, but there were so many other aspects of the story that kept me reading. Rachel’s relationship with her ex-husband, and his relationship with Amy. Megan’s relationship with her boyfriend, and his friendship with Rachel. These characters all connected, and there were times when I was reading this where I’d grit my teeth and think ‘What the hell are you doing? I don’t understand!’

If you love thrillers or crime novels, you’ll love this. And if you’re one of those people who don’t usually like to read, but you sucked it up and read Gone Girl, then you’ll love this book too. My brother said to me a few weeks ago: I want to read clever books. Books that have me guessing. And so I gave him this book.

My Score: 9/10
Buy at BOOKTOPIA or BOOKWORLD

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

Harper Curtis is a killer who stepped out of the past. Kirby Mazrachi is the girl who was never meant to have a future.

Kirby is the last shining girl, one of the bright young women, burning with potential, whose lives Harper is destined to snuff out after he stumbles on a House in Depression-era Chicago that opens on to other times.

At the urging of the House, Harper inserts himself into the lives of the shining girls, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. He’s the ultimate hunter, vanishing into another time after each murder, untraceable-until one of his victims survives.

Determined to bring her would-be killer to justice, Kirby joins the Chicago Sun-Times to work with the ex-homicide reporter, Dan Velasquez, who covered her case. Soon Kirby finds herself closing in on the impossible truth . . .

I’ve wanted to read this book since before I read Broken Monsters – mostly because I love the cover (I really need to stop judging books by their covers) and I was told this book is different to most crime/thriller novels. It’s not really a crime novel as such. It has elements of science fiction in it, and the jumping-back-and-forth style of storytelling is different to that of most crime/thriller novels.

The serial killer, Harper Curtis, is not glorified in this book – nor is his only survivor, Kirby, who starts tracking down his other victims in an attempt to catch Harper. Lauren Beukes always has such great characterisation. Each victim – and they may only be featured on a couple of pages – really feels unique, and you come to understand them, their desires, and what motivates them. And then they leave the story, and you feel depleted.

Beukes does a fantastic job of highlighting social prejudice. Harper travels through different time periods in order to kill these ‘shining girls’, and by doing so, the reader is subjected and thrust into the harsh, sexist or racial criticism that isn’t as prevalent in society today.

Sometimes I found myself having to reread a few pages in the first third of the book when Harper was travelling in and out of different time periods – when he was travelling back to his murders and leaving things at the scene. But this was only until I got the general idea of how his house worked, and how he was travelling back in time. Once I got that, I could follow the story quite easily.

The book ends on an almost ambiguous, especially between Kirby and the detective. I like this, because what Kirby experiences would dramatically affect how she reacts with other people. I recommend this book to people who love reading crime/thriller novels. The science fiction aspect (Harper being able to travel back and forth in time) is but a small aspect of the story, and shouldn’t act as a deterrent to those people who are always like ‘ew science fiction. No thanks’.

My Score: 8/10
Buy at BOOKTOPIA or BOOKWORLD

The Ice Twins by S.K. Tremayne

A year after one of their identical twin daughters, Lydia, dies in an accident, Angus and Sarah Moorcraft move to the tiny Scottish island Angus inherited from his grandmother, hoping to put together the pieces of their shattered lives.

But when their surviving daughter, Kirstie, claims they have mistaken her identity – that she, in fact, is Lydia – their world comes crashing down once again.

As winter encroaches, Angus is forced to travel away from the island for work, Sarah is feeling isolated, and Kirstie (or is it Lydia?) is growing more disturbed. When a violent storm leaves Sarah and her daughter stranded, Sarah finds herself tortured by the past – what really happened on that fateful day one of her daughters died?

I heard rave reviews about this title, but I must admit that I was really disappointed. Overall, the book isn’t as ‘haunting’ or ‘gripping’ as described. I kept waiting for a twist or for a shocking scene where I’d be desperate to get to the end, but this just didn’t happen. The ‘revelation’ at the end isn’t really that shocking because most of the book is pretty predictable and I saw it coming.

The book is from the point of view of the mother, Sarah, and she’s just not a likeable character. She has too much internal dialogue and she doesn’t let the reader realise anything for themselves. She’s also really naïve and delicate, and she asks too many rhetorical questions. She comes across as slightly neurotic, and the reader doesn’t like her enough to disregard her flaws.

I quite liked the husband, Angus. He was authentic and his societal reactions were realistic and effective to the plot. You are positioned to hate him in the novel because his daughter is supposedly ‘scared of him’, but it’s quite clear that he’s not the bad guy.

The setting in the novel helps to isolate the characters and force the reader to really focus on the plot and the relations between Angus and Sarah. I think the author did well to pace the story so that it didn’t move too quickly but it didn’t move too slowly either.

I do think it was missing something – the story just didn’t grab me. Maybe it was the characters and the circumstances. Maybe it was the setting. Or maybe it was the farfetched nature of the premise that disappointed me.

My Score: 5/10
Buy HERE

Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes

In Detroit, violent death – along with foreclosure and despair – is a regular occurrence. But the part-human, part-animal corpses that have started appearing are more disturbing than anything Detective Gabriella Versado has ever seen. As Gabriella works the case, her teenage daughter Layla embarks on a secret crime-fighting project of her own – hunting down online paedophiles – but it all goes horribly wrong…

TK has learned how to make being homeless work for him and his friends, but something evil is threatening the fragile world he’s constructed on the streets…

Ambitious blogger Jonno is getting desperate. The big four-oh isn’t that far away, and he’s still struggling to make his mark. But then he stumbles across some unusual and macabre art, which might just be the break he needs to go viral…

Lauren Beukes travelled to Detroit and spent time taking photos of the city, and then walked around and spoke to locals about their experiences there. Lauren wanted to capture the beauty of Detroit, even though it’s a decaying city full of crime and run down, abandoned buildings. This book is about seeing the beauty in broken things, and presents a serial killer who the reader can sympathise with and feel sorry for.

Lauren illustrates a few different characters and captures each of their voices uniquely. Each point of view adds a different element to the story, and enriches the tale. Stephen King recently read this novel and said that it was “Scary as hell and hypnotic. I couldn’t put it down. Next month. I’d grab it, if I were you.”

You wouldn’t want to read this novel at night – a boy is attached to a deer and a melted woman is found in a kiln. It’s a haunting tale that brings chills to the reader, and it’s written beautifully with realistic dialogue and three dimensional characters. I must admit, I was a little confused and taken aback by the ending – I won’t give it away, but prepare for paranormal presence that seems a little jolting. Despite this, I would happily recommend this novel to anyone who enjoys crime, thrillers, or who-dunnit novels.

My Score: 9/10

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