Find You In The Dark

I did not have anyone to root for in this book. But it was a page-turner.

Sadly, this was mostly boring. I might have liked this more had any of the characters been interesting, but Martin was not, his wife was unpredictable and the two detectives were dumb (Chris) and unbelievably obnoxious (Sandra). The only somewhat entertaining one was the daughter and now I can't even remember her name.

The first half of this novel moves slowly; as a reader, you're trying to figure out exactly how off the rails the protagonist's life is going to go, how sick he really is, and who he is really hurting. When the plot begins to pick up pace, you're (well, I am) tempted to stay up late or skim a few pages to figure out how it ends–who is going to get punished? who gets away with what? etc.

When my book club discussed this novel, we circled around the difficult territory of asking ourselves what parts of the novel are Ripley playing with the tropes of thriller fiction and which parts are perhaps him indulging (unconsciously) in the kinds of misogynist narratives that feed so much of this genre of fiction. Because the protagonist doesn't, himself, kill women, a reader may find him/herself tempted to see him as a better/healthier kind of psychopath (a la Dexter). But when you inspect the gender constructions of both the healthy-seeming and pathological relationships in the novel, you (ok–I mean me) find yourself wondering why did Ripley feel the need to go over the worn territory of “creepy dude stalks and kills vulnerable women” narrative in the first place.

I confess that #metoo and reading about Junot Diaz and other authors' sexual aggression toward women and the response that, if one looks closely at these authors' books, one can clearly see their attitudes about women, figured into my reading of this novel more than I thought it would. Where is the joy, the thrill, the excitement, of writing about the savage murders of so many women ? Is that not misogyny, full stop?

This book was provided to me by NetGalley for free in exchange for an honest review.

Wow I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It took me a little while longer than usual to get through it but that's only because I was savouring it. I was so curious how it was going to come together at the end and i have to say it was done very well. Everything I was curious about got covered very well.

I have to say that I kind of wish at the end that his daughter died. Not that I am a horrible person who wants to read about people's suffering but I feel like it would have had more of a gut punch. This mad did everything he could including killing someone to get his daughter back only to have her be killed anyway, it would have been more shocking. Nevertheless I still do like my happy endings, even though let's be honest, that poor girl's life will never be the same.

My only complaint about the writing was that it was written from the first person point of view in the main character's chapters but everyone else was in third person. I don't see why there needed to be this inconsistency, as we know of course that Reese is the main character and we would not feel strayed from that.

I would definitely recommend it to anyone who likes thrillers and something that is more neutral than just hero and bad guy as it delves a bit into Reese's psyche and kind of why he does the things he does.