REVIEW || 'The Girl Before' by Rena Olsen
“So how can my normal not be normal? If it is what has always been, isn’t that normal? And how can that be wrong?”
★★★★★ [5] Stars
“So how can my normal not be normal? If it is what has always been, isn’t that normal? And how can that be wrong?”
★★★★★
5/5 Stars
Holy dark&twisted, Batman! I consider myself a psychological thriller aficionado (because really, in this day and age, who isn’t?!), but “The Girl Before” took that genre to an entirely different level — and in the best way.
Without giving too much away, I can tell you the story revolves around Clara Lawson, a 23 year-old girl who finds herself taken from her home and led to a room for questioning. As she’s dragged from her home, she hears her husband urge her to stay quiet and say nothing…The chapters alternate between “now” and “then” to paint a perfect picture of Clara’s dark, disturbing reality.
Olsen does a brilliant job bringing Clara’s emotions and inner turmoil to life. Often times, I find myself wanting more in psychological thriller protagonists — more development, more raw emotions, more believable scenarios. “The Girl Before” left me with NONE of those feelings. Clara’s development through the novel progressed (and regressed) appropriately, and to me, it was exactly as it should be for a protagonist in her shoes. I don’t know that I would have changed a thing about the novel, and that’s a rare statement coming from me.
I hate that I read this so soon after it was published…now I’ll have to wait a hot minute for her next book. Good thing every author is on the dark & twisty bandwagon and there are (quite literally) thousands of options to keep me occupied through at least 2025.
**Sidebar: while this novel is amazing in every way, it does touch on some serious themes including rape, murder, kidnapping, human trafficking, prostitution and abuse. If any of these are triggers for you, I’d recommend skipping this read.
REVIEW || 'Pretty Baby' by Mary Kubica
“How much maltreatment and exploitation could someone handle before losing self-control?”
★★★ [3] Stars
“How much maltreatment and exploitation could someone handle before losing self-control?”
★★★
3/5 Stars
That quote perfectly encapsulates the heart and soul of Pretty Baby. After reading her debut novel, The Good Girl, I fell in love with Kubica’s style of writing. Finally I’d found a dark & twisted novel that didn’t feel like a stepchild to Gone Girl. (Speaking of…I really did enjoy Gone Girl, but I am so tired of seeing “Fans of Gone Girl, you’ll LOVE this one!” everywhere on the shelves of Barnes & Noble. Let. It. Go.) Anyways, when I realized Kubica published a second novel last summer, I nominated it as a “to-read” for my monthly book club. (“Book club” is a loose term – it’s more of a wine/dine club where three longtime friends casually discuss a book and how it compares to their lives, etc. Sometimes we even take prom pics on each other’s staircases…it sounded like a good idea at the time.)
We chose Pretty Baby as our December read, so I spent most of my holiday travel time reading it. To say I was disappointed would be an understatement; I had high hopes for Kubica after a strong first novel, but I’m sad to say she let me down. The story centers around Heidi Wood, a depressed woman with a severe savior complex, and Willow, a homeless teenage runaway with a dark and disturbing past. On the way to work every morning, Heidi watches Willow (and her 4-month-old baby) from her seat on the train, slowly working up the nerve to talk to the girl and offer help. Heidi’s innate need to save the world takes over as she invites Willow and the baby in to her home.
Tensions rise between Heidi and her family as Willow becomes a permanent fixture in their pricey, Chicago condo. After clues about Willow’s past begin to surface, Heidi ignores them and decides to live in ignorance of the truth. But which truth – Willow’s or her own?
That question makes the book sound more like an “edge-of-your-seat” gripper than it really was…everything from Heidi’s past was given to the reader early on (and then repeated MULTIPLE times), so I never felt the intended anxiety around her character. While I don’t pretend to understand what Heidi was feeling in terms of grief or depression, I can say that I found her coping mechanisms to be childish and selfish. Her neglect of her child and husband in favor of fulfilling her deepest desire really irked me. What happened to her at the end was neither surprising nor upsetting – it was fitting.
Willow’s story was tragic, and my heart hurt for her as I read each flashback of her childhood. I feel Kubica could have done so much more with this character – Willow was set-up to be a complex, multi-faceted character, and I feel she fell flat in the end. Really the novel’s ending fell flat in all accounts. Everything was predictable; I never really had that jaw-dropping, stomach-flipping moment I was anticipating throughout. Had Kubica tied together the loose ends (with Heidi’s best friend of her daughter, for example), I believe she could’ve crafted the perfect denouement to her sophomore work.
All in all, I give the book 2.5 of 5 stars. Fingers crossed that her next book (publishing this May) doesn’t leave as much to be desired…..regardless, I know I’ll be one of the first to devour it.