JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

Did You See Melody? by Sophie Hannah

Pushed to breaking point, Cara Burrows abandons her home and family and escapes to a five-star spa resort she can’t afford. Late at night, exhausted and desperate, she lets herself into her hotel room and is shocked to find it already occupied – by a man and a teenage girl.

A simple mistake on the part of the hotel receptionist – but Cara’s fear intensifies when she works out that the girl she saw alive and well in the hotel room is someone she can’t possibly have seen: the most famous murder victim in the country, Melody Chapa, whose parents are serving life sentences for her murder.

Cara doesn’t know what to trust: everything she’s read and heard about the case, or the evidence of her own eyes. Did she really see Melody? And is she prepared to ask herself that question and answer it honestly if it means risking her own life?

Did You See Melody? is a crime novel that solves a cold case murder in the United States. Cara is swept up in the mystery when she takes some time away from her family for a break, and discovers that a young girl in the resort was supposedly murdered years earlier.

I’m going to have to walk past the two men in order to look natural. I slow my pace, hoping to hear some of their conversation, but it’s no use. The detective spotted me straight away and is saying things he’s decided it’s okay for me to hear: ‘Thanks for your help’ and ‘Worth a try, whatever the odds.’

Whilst the premise of the novel is intriguing and engaging, the characters are the weakest aspect of the novel. My favourite character was resort guest Tarin Fry because she was sharp, witty, confident and hilarious. But I felt like the other characters fell short. Bonnie Juno seemed like a stereotypical talk show host whose opinion was one-sided and whose presence in any scene was overbearing. Tarin’s daughter Zellie is spoilt and unlikable, popping up in the story when she really isn’t needed (Sophie could’ve cut her out of the story and it probably wouldn’t have made a difference).

And Cara Burrows is actually a really rubbish character — a weak, self-absorbed woman who I didn’t care for at all. She takes most of her family’s life savings and ditches them because they weren’t happy about her pregnancy. And the real reason she was unhappy was because no one asked her how she felt about the pregnancy. Any woman with a bit more backbone would’ve stood up for herself. Her whole backstory didn’t make much sense to me, and I lost respect for her within the first couple of pages:

“As I swim, I have an idea. I’m going to take some photos on the iPad Mason lent me and post them on Instagram, like I might if I were on a normal holiday, so that Jess and Olly can see I’m having a good time and there’s nothing to worry about.”

She ditches her family for two weeks but communicates with her kids via Instagram? She desperately wants to be alone for two weeks, but while she’s at the resort all she talks about is her kids and how she’s worried what they think of her. It’s kind of jolting when you’re reading it.

Another downside to the book was that it was overwritten. The first 50 pages are really slow because Sophie spends pages and pages describing the spa and the hotel. I thought I was settling in for a crime/thriller novel and yet the beginning of the book feels like a chick lit novel.

The premise of the novel is strong, and I kept reading the book because I was intrigued enough to want to find out what happens at the end. The novel switches back and forth between present day prose, to previously published newspaper articles and interview transcripts for Bonnie Juno’s show.

KH: Then, according to you, the Chapas planted the sock in Kristie Reville’s car, and also later moved it to Melody’s school bag?
BJ: Absolutely
KH: So they got lucky twice? Kristie Reville left her car unlocked twice, at two very opportune moments for Annette and Naldo Chapa?

There is a much larger mystery behind Melody’s disappearance, and it’s enjoyable reading the book trying to figure out who might be responsible.

“The sound of the key turning, the door opening: scrape, click, creak. I’ve taught myself to keep still when I hear these familiar noises. They don’t mean I’m going anywhere, or that anything will change.”

Whilst I kept reading so that I could find out the answer to the mystery, I still felt let down by this novel. I wouldn’t recommend this to crime fiction fiends. You’ll probably find yourselves disappointed. I would recommend this novel to readers who like to float between genres and aren’t too fussed with what they read, and who like a bit of mystery but aren’t overly loyal to it.

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

Did You See Melody?
Sophie Hannah
September 2017
Hachette Book Publishers

After I’ve Gone by Linda Green

On a wet Monday in January, Jess Mount checks Facebook and discovers her timeline appears to have skipped forward 18 months, to a day when shocked family and friends are posting heartbreaking tributes to her following her death in an accident. Jess is left scared and confused: is she the target of a cruel online prank or is this a terrifying glimpse of her true fate?

Amongst the posts are photos of a gorgeous son she has not yet conceived. But when new posts suggest her death was deliberate, Jess realises that if she changes the future to save her own life, the baby boy she has fallen in love with may never exist.

After I’ve Gone is a gripping new thriller about a young girl who knows she will be dead in 18 months’ time, but doesn’t know how it happens or even how to stop it.

Jess Mount, the protagonist of the story, is 22 years old and is enjoying life. She isn’t stressed about love or her career, and she’s carefree. She works at the local movie theatres with her best friend and she lives with her dad. The two are very close. She lives a pretty quiet life, and she doesn’t anticipate that her life will change anytime soon.

When she meets Lee, she falls in love instantly. He’s older than her, but he’s charming, sweet, caring and he wins over everyone with his personality. Jess meets his mother Angela and she really warms to Jess. But as her Facebook timeline fills up with posts from the future, Jess learns that Leo has been charged with her murder. And the case is going to trial. She can’t believe that the man she’s falling in love with could be responsible for her death.

“My heart is hammering against my chest, as if trying to alert me of the impending danger. My eyes, when I see them reflected in the wardrobe mirrors, are wild and staring. My whole body is trembling. I do not want to believe this. I do not want my happiness spoilt. Whoever is doing this, and however they are doing it, they are doing it on purpose to hurt me. I know that.”

When Jess tries to show her best friend Sadie the Facebook posts, Sadie can’t see anything. She just sees Jess’ normal timeline. So Jess can’t do anything but continue to watch as loved ones post tributes to her.

“The photo I am looking at is of me and Lee on our wedding day. I know Photoshop is good, but it is not that good. You can’t play around with something that isn’t there. This isn’t a case of airbrushing something out, this is the creation of something that has not happened.”

I think the strengths of this book lie with the characters, and the writing. Linda Green has done a wonderful job of bringing Jess to life. She’s young and at times immature, and quite naive. She is determined to alter her fate, but doesn’t want to risk losing her son. Sadie is also a fantastic character. She’s determined, fierce, bold and whenever she and Jess are in a scene together they’ve got great dynamic. She’s incredibly loyal to Jess and is very compassionate. She’s protective of her, and in her Facebook posts to Jess’ timeline in the future, she’s determined to uncover the truth about Jess’ death.

I think the pacing was one of the weaknesses in the book. The first half of the book was really slow. Jess knew that she was going to die in 18 months’ time and because of photos and stories being posted on her timeline, she knew about certain events before they happened. And yet, when the events came to play before her, she let them happen? I thought she’d be a bit more defiant and would try to alter the timeline a lot more. Instead, I think she tried maybe twice and then gave up rather easily.

The ending is quite obvious and I picked it in the first fifty pages of the book. The twist wasn’t really a twist. Additionally, scattered throughout the book are chapters that are written in past tense. They document a time in Jess’ life after her mother died and she felt a little lost with life. Her best friend and her dad helped her, and she was able to recover from her breakdown. Truthfully, I don’t think these chapters were needed. Jess’ dad and best friend both mention this time in her life at various points throughout the book, and so I actually found myself skimming those chapters.

This book may be a thriller and it may be a case of ‘whodunnit’ but it is also an exploration into domestic violence. Linda has done an exceptional job of really capturing what it’s like for a domestic violence victim, getting drawn into the web of their abuser and being unable to leave without the fear of being harmed (of their loved ones being harmed).

For anyone who is about to read this book, I really recommend you read the author’s note at the end. It’s incredibly moving. The motivation behind the book and the research that went into the book were particularly fascinating.

“Thirty per cent of domestic violence starts or gets worse when a woman is pregnant. When, twenty years ago, I relayed the findings of a survey on this from a local women’s refuge, my news editor, said, ‘Yeah that’s because the men have got more to aim for’. When I objected to this ‘joke’ I was told that feminists lack a sense of humour.”

I recommend this book to readers who love thriller novels. I picked the ending of this pretty early on, but I know some readers who didn’t. This book has many layers, and the author has evidently done her research. It’s incredibly well-written.

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

After I’ve Gone
Linda Green
August 2017
Hachette Book Publishers

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

Wimmera by Mark Brandi

In the long, hot summer of 1989, Ben and Fab are best friends.

Growing up in a small country town, they spend their days playing cricket, yabbying in local dams, wanting a pair of Nike Air Maxes and not talking about how Fab’s dad hits him or how the sudden death of Ben’s next-door neighbour unsettled him. Almost teenagers, they already know some things are better left unsaid.

Then a newcomer arrived in the Wimmera. Fab reckoned he was a secret agent and he and Ben staked him out. Up close, the man’s shoulders were wide and the veins in his arms stuck out, blue and green. His hands were enormous, red and knotty. He looked strong. Maybe even stronger than Fab’s dad. Neither realised the shadow this man would cast over both their lives.

Twenty years later, Fab is still stuck in town, going nowhere but hoping for somewhere better. Then a body is found in the river, and Fab can’t ignore the past any more.

Wimmera is a literary crime novel set in a small town with a big secret. Ben and Fab are best friends, and the book explores their friendship in various stages of their lives, from when they’re young boys to when they’re older. The two boys share a secret that they don’t speak of.

The novel is broken up into three parts. The first part takes place during the hot summer of 1989, when Ben gets a new neighbour, Ronnie. Daisy Wolfe and her family have just recently left town after fourteen year old Daisy hung herself on the clothesline in the backyard. Ronnie moves into their house and Ben starts doing some odd jobs around his place as a way to make extra money.

The second part of the book is predominantly set twenty years later; Fab is still living in Wimmera noticeably unsettled by what happened the last few times he saw Ben. The reader is left in the dark, because part one ends on a rather abrupt note, and then part two picks up twenty years later. Ben doesn’t appear to be living in Wimmera anymore, and Fab’s life seems to be stagnant. As the reader, you start speculating what happened at the end of that summer in 1989.

The final part of the book follows a police investigation about a body that is found in the local river. Fab is called in for questioning.

Mark Brandi has a Criminal Justice degree and used to work for the Victorian Department of Justice, so a lot of the procedural and legal aspects of the book no doubt came from his own personal experience.

Brandi captures the atmosphere of a small town really well. Gossip gets around fast and there seems to be a darkness building in the town. Wimmera also feels like a town where lots of people talk, but no one seems to ask any questions. Daisy commits suicide and people seem fast to move on from it, especially after the Wolfe family move away from town. When Ben goes to a party and people are gossiping about why they think Daisy committed suicide, there seems to be no sense of urgency to find out the real reason. Rather, everyone goes about living their lives. This contributes to the overall melancholic feel of the book – you feel like these characters are stuck in this town and that they’re never going to leave. And then when you move on to part two, you realise that Fab is indeed stuck in this town.

“He tried to imagine Daisy’s body hanging from that old steel clothesline, creaking as it shifted in the wind. He could see her dark eyes and her legs, perfectly white, swinging in the air.”

The writing is fantastic. It’s lyrical, evocative and vivid and the Brandi allows us to really understand these characters without actually telling us a whole lot about them. Through their circumstances, and how they act in certain situations, we learn all about the boys and the nature of their friendship. Fab’s dad hits him, but Ben doesn’t really say anything about it to Fab or anyone else, and Ben’s new neighbour Ronnie really unsettles him, but Fab doesn’t trust his instinct enough to do anything about it (or ask Ben about it). At times, both characters turn a blind eye to what they don’t want to discuss.

“The first time Ben went to Ronnie’s house was to cut the grass. It was Saturday and he played cricket in the morning at Great Western and they won…When Ben got home after cricket, his mum told him Ronnie had come by and he’d have to go over there after lunch.”

The first part of the book is most definitely the strongest section of Wimmera. I actually wanted to find out more about that summer, and felt like Mark didn’t develop the boys’ friendship as much as he could have. I understand what his intention was. He wanted to end part one on a rather gut-wrenching moment, but when I started part two I was actually quite disappointed with where the book went and I would’ve liked to go back to the summer of 1989. The transition between Ben’s story in 1989, to Fab’s story twenty years later, felt rather disjointed.

Ronnie was a predictable character, and I was not surprised at all when he and Ben’s ‘friendship’ became something more. I personally felt like the police investigation and the resulting trial was rushed and was too quick, and that part of the book should’ve either been bulked up and developed further, or just cut out of the book completely. There would’ve been more suspense and intrigue if the body was found but we didn’t find out absolutely everything that happened on the night of that character’s death. The book was building up really slowly and Mark Brandi was drawing the reader in with all this mystery, and then I hit part three and all of a sudden it’s moving at 100 miles per hour and the pacing doesn’t quite match the rest of the book.

I recommend this book to people who love crime fiction. This may be quite a literary book, but at the heart of the story is a mysterious death and Mark pulls you in right from the first page. People who loved The Dry by Jane Harper or Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey will love Wimmera.

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

Wimmera
Mark Brandi
July 2017
Hachette Book Publishers

The Dry by Jane Harper

The Dry is crime fiction set in the small country town of Kiewarra. Luke Hadler, a struggling farmer, has turned a gun on his wife and child, and then himself. It appears that the years of punishing drought had finally tipped Luke over the edge, causing him to murder his wife and child and leave one sole survivor: his baby daughter. Federal police investigator Aaron Falk, 36, returns home to Kiewarra for the funerals after twenty years away. After Luke’s parents plead with him to look into the case, Falk decides to stay on and investigates the deaths, just in case Luke’s family were actually murdered.

Jane Harper has done a wonderful job of illustrating a closed in environment – a small town where everyone knows everyone and secrets don’t stay hidden for long. Kiewarra is suffering a drought, causing all the farmers to struggle and tensions to rise. Jane Harper has written the dry Australian outback very well, drawing in the reader with this vast open setting. At times, the reader feels claustrophobic, their world getting smaller and smaller with each accusation or twist in the plot. We can feel the tension building between the characters and we start to suspect everyone who comes into the book.

The Dry is written beautifully. It’s a slow build, with sly comments and throwaway sentences that could just as easily be clues to the mystery, and the reader isn’t sure what to take note of and what to cast aside. It becomes a guessing game, suspecting everyone in the town. In a crime novel, it can be frustrating when the clues are too obvious but the detective can’t see it. But in The Dry, Falk is smarter than the reader. He joins the dots faster than we could and his character helps propel the story forward and keep the reader interested.

“When Aaron Falk was eleven, he’d seen Mal Deacon turn his own flock into a staggering, bleeding mess using shearing clippers and a brutal hand. Aaron had felt an ache swell in his chest as he, Luke and Elli had watched one sheep after another brawled to the ground of the Deacons’ shed with a sharp twist and sliced too close to the skin.”

I thought the ending to this book would be a massive twist. But the reasons why Luke Hadler’s family died really couldn’t have been guessed, so I felt a little cheated. I like to read thrillers like this and then get to the end and think ‘oh I can’t believe I didn’t guess that’. But you really can’t guess the ending to this book. There’s no twist or turn or surprise. Just an explanation.

One of my only criticisms of the book was that I did feel like the characters were a little too light. Falk felt like a cardboard cut-out to me, with so much information left out about him that I felt like I didn’t really know him well and in turn, I didn’t really care about him as much as I would’ve like to. I cared more for the mystery than the characters in the story, and I felt like I should’ve cared about both of those elements.

But, for any readers who love crime fiction and thrillers, this mystery will envelop you and keep you intrigued until the very last page. The writing is beautiful and the characters are realistic and the setting is brilliant. A fantastic premise for a crime fiction debut, and very well executed by Jane Harper.

The Dry
Jane Harper
May 2016
Pan Macmillan Publishers