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You not for me
You not for me
Book Review “The Book of You” by Claire Kendal
Yet another thriller, a genre I don’t normally read, but it caught my eye in Waterstones and I found myself fascinated by the blurb. This, coupled with the fact that I had enjoyed the thrillers I had read recently so much, made me decide to give this new book a try.
It started out well. I liked the style, the easy way of writing, the way I felt I know the main protagonist right from the outset. We like her yet we can see she has faults. She is quite weak, easily led.
So to begin with I raced through it, scarcely able to put it down, shushing my husband if he tried to speak to me while I was reading it. After a while, though, I began to get irked by it. The things that happened became repetitive. The character began to annoy me. There was just so much more she could do to stop what was happening to her and she didn’t.
I also found it confusing the way the narrative changed both from first to third person, and present to past tense. There didn’t seem to be any reason for it and I preferred it in present tense.
To me, the sub-plot detracted from, rather than adding to, the main story, and although I understood the point of having it, It was so dragged out that it felt like just extra padding.
Basically, the whole thing lacked credulity and was unevenly paced, so that by the end I was just reading it to see what happened.
The ending itself was highly disappointing. I don’t mind not knowing exactly what has happened at the end of a story. Many of my own novels allow the reader to make up their own mind. However, the abrupt ending left me deeply dissatisfied and added to my frustration at the ineffectuality of the main protagonist.
Bethany Askew is the author of eight novels: The Time Before, The World Within, Out of Step, Counting the Days, Poppy's Seed, Three Extraordinary Years The Two Saras and I Know You, Don't I? She has also written a short story, The Night of the Storm, and she writes poetry. Two more women’s fiction books have been accepted for publication in 2020 and 2021 respectively and she is currently working on a new novel. In her spare time she enjoys reading, music, theatre, walking, Pilates, dancing and voluntary work. Bethany is married and lives in Somerset.