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Pages : 560
Read on : Kindle
Review: I hate hype. Such a damper. Before you conclude that this blog has and probably will bash more books than praise , please hear me out.
No surprise that this book has been around for a while and has managed to be the most voted in the Goodreads Choice Awards in 2012. Majority of the people who I know have read this loved the creep factor. Unfortunately it failed to scare me.
Don't get me wrong , I love a good psychological thriller , especially if it's Hitchcock-esque. I got excited. Inquisitive me went through this book without reading a single review or comment terrified of spoiler contents. I guess now I can say it wouldn't have made a difference. I found it way too predictable. I sat there clutching this book hoping a brain-exploding thriller with a reasons so complex and deep rooted that it would horrify me. ( Well , to some extent it did )
Part One of the book was slow. Stagnant if I should say but I know that's only to build momentum in the pages to come. So I knew I had to keep going. May be it's due to the fact that me and several other Goodreads reviewers have read ample thrillers, mysteries , Stephen King , Mary Higgins Clark , *Insert favourite mystery author here* , that the clues left in Part One itself were way too stark to ignore.
Part Two gets to the point and really picks up pace. This part I have to say kept me going. I was dying to get to the end and to some extent I can say it wasn't all that disappointing. It did have some favourable twists and turns.
What really bothered and disturbed me aside from the rather crass language and profanity , was the misogynistic tone in the book. I get it. That was probably required in the story but the feminist in me couldn't ignore the chorus of 'Women are crazy!' statuses and comments that erupted on social media soon after the movie trailer was released. This book is one case. One example. It does not apply to each and every woman out there.
The only way I can see this book is as a dark comedy not really a thriller despite the unexpected end that does mimic a Hitchcock style screenplay but on the whole this book left a bad after-taste. It baffled me. I didn't love it. I didn't hate it either. I did enjoy the mind games. That's about it. Nothing more nothing less. I do certainly agree with a lot of Goodread reviewers that this book was long. Unnecessarily long for the kind of plot this is. It drags more than actually tell whats happening next or what the changes in the scenario are.
Would I recommend this book to everyone? May be just to see what they thought once they were done with it.
Final Rating : 3/5
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