Sunset City
Ratings2
Average rating2.5
"Danielle Reeves was Charlotte Ford's most loyal and vibrant friend. She helped Charlotte through her mother's illness and death, and opened up about her own troubled family. The two friends were inseparable, reveling in Houston's shadowy corners. But Danielle's addiction got the best of her and she went to prison for four years. When she gets out, she and Charlotte reconnect. Charlotte hopes this is a new start for their friendship. Then a detective shows up at Charlotte's apartment. Danielle has been murdered, bludgeoned to death. Overwhelmed by grief, Charlotte is determined to understand how the most alive person she has ever known could end up dead. The deeper Charlotte descends into Danielle's dark world, the less she understands. Was Danielle a hapless victim or master manipulator? Was she really intent on starting over, or was it all an act? To find the truth, Charlotte must keep her head clear and her guard up. Houston has a way of feeding on bad habits, and Charlotte doesn't want to get swallowed whole." -- jacket.
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Noir doesn't (apparently) mean what it once did.
I was expecting mystery and I was expecting dark. I got mystery and I got dark.
But not just dark. Black. The blackest.
Sunset City is a short novel set in Houston about a young woman trying to find her way. She doesn't enjoy her work. She doesn't have any family. Her friends are involved in all sorts of unsavory activities. And then one of her friends is found dead. Murdered.
Probably just me but I just wasn't carried away by the story. The Houston references were accurate but they didn't feel distinctive; they felt thrown in. The grit of the story was accurate, I'm sure, but it didn't touch me emotionally.
I read this simply because it was short and sounded fairly interesting. What I got was a weird mystery with a main character who is just a mess. Seriously, Charlotte drinks constantly and does drugs like most people breathe. Also, everyone she comes in contact with wants to sleep with her, including the mature, older detective who spends very little time in this story actually detecting.
Ginsburg's voice is fine, I'm not a thriller reader but I didn't find this to be a real edge of your seat read. It was just...okay. And short.
