Here are my thoughts on these books.
None of This Is True by Lisa Jewell
Lisa Jewell (of The Family Upstairs, I Found You and The Third Wife fame) has given us this interesting psychological thriller this year. The plot is pretty much summed up by the title of the book. It's about Josie Fair who meets her "birthday twin" Alix Summers, a journalist with a popular podcast. They hit up a friendship and Josie offers her "intriguing" true life story to be made into another podcast. Josie who is from a small town lives with her husband and a daughter now. Her other daughter has left home. While her behavior is shady and odd, her life story is interesting and Alix is sure, it can make for another successful podcast. So she ignores the odd behavior and lets Josie enter her life and her home. Many different twists and turns later, you learn that Josie's story is not exactly true. So, what is the truth then?
The author tries too hard to confuse the reader with different narratives from different characters at the end but fails at it. A rather disturbing trope in this book which made it difficult to go on was a female character who is 13 yr old being blamed for entering into a relationship with a grown middle aged man! No matter how well written this is and how interesting the characters get at certain points, this is just unacceptable.
This book currently has a 4.2 rating on Goodreads and my intuition tells me, might end up winning this year's Goodreaders Choice Award under Mystery and Thriller. However, due to the problematic plot point, I am going to give it a 3
The Maidens by Alex Michaelides
Alex Michaelides who rose to fame with his debut novel, The Silent Patient could have done so much better with his second book, The Maidens. The first book set a gold standard for psychological thriller novels. For someone who wrote that, to then lay in front of us a book like The Maidens is pretty disappointing
Mariana Andros, a group therapist has recently lost her husband, Sebastian. In the middle of her grieving process, she has to pack her bags to Cambridge to go see her niece, Zoe whose friend Tara is murdered. A series of more killings leads Mariana to believe and allege that Edward Fosca, the "dazzling" Greek Tragedy Professor is the murderer. Her obsession with this belief makes her go overboard and mess with the police investigation. When she stops, the actual murderer becomes visible.
A fast thriller that lost the plot near the end is how I would sum it up. Very well written with interesting characters but the ending was too much of a stretch. It feels like a twist for the sake of a twist. It had such a potential to be a good story. Any other character in the book would have made a more convincing murderer than the actual one!
Others
I read two graphic novels this year, This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki (illustrated by Jillian Tamaki) and Ghosts by Raina Telgemeier.
This One Summer has to be the most visually pleasant books that I have read. Its a coming age story of two friends that meet during the summer break. The illustrations are so beautiful, depicting a small town, the beach, the night sky, a forest, so many places that you feel like you are in them.
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Ghosts is a heart touching story of a young Catrina and her younger sister, Maya who is currently unwell. They meet ghosts in their new town who help Catrina process her grief over Maya's illness.
I had stopped reading books some time ago. I am glad that the desire to devour books has come back 😊💟. I took up The Silent Patient again this week but then, to complete my reading challenge, I had to move on to an old book on my TBR, Tell Her Everything by Mirza Waheed . So far so good. If you are reading this post, do let me know in the comments what books made your year!
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