Tag / psychological thriller

by the literary brat

Review Time: The Innocent Wife

theinnocentwife

“She felt suddenly very alone, as though the person she married had never existed and she had woken up to a life she didn’t recognize, in the middle of a story she didn’t understand.”

Eighteen years after the release of the true-crime documentary about the murder of 18-year-old Holly Michaels, Samantha was introduced to the world and crimes of Dennis Danson. Before she knew it, Sam was obsessed with Framing the Truth: The Murder of Holly Michaels, the documentary made about the case. She knew Dennis didn’t do it. She just knew it. She spent countless hours on message boards dedicated to finding Holly’s real killer, diving deeper and deeper into the world of Dennis Danson. One day, Sam decided to write to Dennis, and to her surprise, a few weeks later she received a response from THE Dennis Danson. And so, as they say, the story began.

Soon after Sam and Dennis started their letter writing campaign, Sam flew to Florida from her home in England to meet him in person. With the help of Carrie, Framing the Truth‘s director who was in the midst of filming a follow-up documentary, Sam began a through-the-plexiglass relationship with the convicted murderer. It was everything she ever wanted and he was the man she was meant to be with. So, when Dennis proposed, Sam accepted without hesitation. They were married in the prison, separated by the ever-present plexiglass, with the new documentary’s crew around as witnesses. As the new documentary, A Boy From Red River, continued to take shape, the crew discovered some previously untested evidence and managed to successfully get Dennis’s conviction overturned, releasing him back into the free world.

Soon after Dennis’s release from prison, Sam started questioning her decision to leave her life behind for this man who, when she was honest with herself, she didn’t really know. After a few months of living the TV-interview high life, Dennis’s father passed away, leaving Dennis and Sam with the responsibility of cleaning out his house in the backwoods of Florida. But as time went on, Sam knew that something was just not right. Could Dennis have hurt that girl? And the others that went missing before Holly died? There’s no way — is there?

The Innocent Wife was a fun read. The story was compelling, especially in today’s world of constant true-crime exposure a la Making a Murderer. It explores the concept of what would happen if the person we championed for almost two decades turned out to not be the man we backed. The end of the story, however, left a little to be desired. There were a bunch of storylines that the author opened the door to, but never ended up going over threshold for. For example, Sam popped Vicodin for a good one-fourth of the book, but in the end it just sort of didn’t matter. Like… way to get my hopes up for some raunchy stuff, lady. There are other, more blatant plot holes, but #spoileralert. Let’s just say, the conclusion was rushed. And a little lackluster, to be honest. But the first 3/4 of the book was two-thumbs way up.

My favorite scene: The afternoon after Dennis got released from prison, the documentary’s crew threw a party for him. As he mingled with and met the people who made his exoneration possible, Sam started to realize that maybe she didn’t know what she was doing and maybe she didn’t make the right decision with her life. It was a turning point for Dennis, obviously, but also a turning point in the life that Sam had pictured with her once-obsession and now-husband. Just maybe not the turning point she had hoped it would be.

Grade: ★★★☆☆

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by the literary brat

Review Time: I’m Thinking of Ending Things

im thinking of ending things

“Sometimes a thought is closer to truth, to reality, than an action. You can say anything, you can do anything, but you can’t fake a thought.”

We’re introduced to our unnamed narrator with the revelation that she’s thinking of ending her relationship with her boyfriend, Jake. As she describes it, it’s a thought that popped into her head and one she can’t shake. To make matters worse, as these thoughts swirl around in her head, she’s embarking on a road trip with her boyfriend to meet his parents.

Jake is a scientist. He toils away, day after day, in a lab. He’s fond of speaking about the abstract. He used to live out on a farm way out in the middle of nowhere. And he’s excited for his girlfriend to meet his parents.

The girlfriend (it feels so weird calling her that, but she doesn’t have a name) enjoys philosophizing with Jake, discussing the deep and abstract for virtually the entire car ride. She gets very odd and very scary phone calls from her own phone number on a semi-regular basis. She’s a little bit all over the place.

Jake’s house is creepy AF. His parents are super odd. The meal they serve isn’t conducive to the girlfriend’s vegetarian palate. The basement door appears to be covered in what looks like frantic scratch marks. There are super odd paintings down in the dark and damp basement that she decided to explore alone (who does that?!). The farm is just weird and she wants to get out.

A snow storm begins as soon as the couple gets back on the road, but that doesn’t deter Jake from detouring to Dairy Queen for a sweet frozen treat. With treats in hand, they start their trip again, though they make another detour a few minutes later to throw away the cups before they cause a mess in the car. LOL WUT? They end up at a deserted high school in the middle of a snowstorm in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

And that’s when shit gets really weird.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things was creepy from the first page to the very last. The couple’s soliloquies about random things during their car ride served to demonstrate their level of intelligence and compatibility, but good grief were they annoying. So many decisions they made, so many things that happened, just made you want to shake both of them. WHAT ARE YOU DOING, YOU NIMROD?!? But I suppose, in the end, those decisions made sense. Those decisions led to what will most likely go down as the weirdest and most WTF ending I’ve ever read. Seriously. You’ll see. It’s a total mind-warp and I think I need to read it four more times to really piece it all together. It toys with your emotions and messes with your mind and really just shakes you up. I finished this one a few days ago and I seriously haven’t been able to stop thinking about just how weird it was. But like… in a good way. Good weird? Is that a thing? It is now.

My favorite scene: Throughout the whole book, there are little excerpts of conversations from people talking about some vague crime that happened, something that totally shocked the community. These little snippets, as vague and disconnected as they are, really serve to push the reader forward with the story. What happened? What are they talking about? Who could they be referring to? Is it Jake? The girlfriend? Who?! Those passages, more than anything else in the story, sucked me in and propelled me forward. Ah, the promise of drama.

Grade: ★★★★☆