While out with her daughter Andrea (Andy) on her 31st
birthday, Laura Oliver confronts a gunman in a diner and kills him. Andy witnesses the actions of a woman she
cannot believe is her mother: “None of
it made sense. Her mother was a
fifty-five-year-old speech therapist.
She played bridge, for chrissakes.
She didn’t kill people and smoke cigarettes and rail against the pigs.” Circumstances soon have Andy taking a road
trip which becomes a quest to learn who her mother was. Interspersed with Andy’s search into Laura’s
past are flashbacks to 1986 which detail Laura’s activities as a young woman.
The book has its fair share of blood and gore as well as emotional and
physical abuse. There are also several family
secrets and hidden identities and motives.
Andy has to untangle Laura’s web of lies but it soon becomes clear that
Laura was also caught in a web of deceit spun by another.
Laura’s backstory I found was a little too farfetched. Her motivation for her involvement in
activities does not ring true. People
can be very emotionally vulnerable and open to manipulation, but Laura’s
inability to see the truth is unconvincing.
She continues to obsessively love one abuser though she willingly helped
kill another abuser? She claims to have
a “tiny piece of herself that . . .
could always [be nudged] into insanity”?
Considering her volunteer experience, she cannot see the truth of her
brother’s condition?
There are also issues with Andy’s characterization. Though she is 31, she behaves like a
teenager, an immature one at that. She
is drifting through life and seems incapable of making a decision. She is insecure and naïve and lacks common
sense. As one character points out, she
can barely complete a sentence. Such a
person would work as a 911 dispatcher?
And the reader is to accept that in a matter of days, Andy gains so much
confidence? Perhaps Andy is supposed to
be a copy of her younger mother and so explain Laura’s naivety and poor
choices?
Other characters are also unconvincing.
Andrew supposedly loves his sister but he doesn’t tell his sister what
he knows about Nick? Nick is supposed to
be charming but we are only told that and never really shown his charm so his
charismatic appeal is not convincing. A
marshal can be so good at following someone and yet be so inept as well?
The book is entertaining enough so makes for a passable escapist
read. The reader would be advised not to
analyze too much.
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