Review: The Wife Who Knew Too Much (by Michele Campbell)



My Rating:  2 stars



This is the third book I've read by author Michele Campbell and the second one that I've disliked strongly enough to give it only 2 stars (and still feel like I'm being too generous).   

Last year, when I read Campbell's A Stranger on the Beach, the two biggest issues I had with the book were the badly executed story line as well as the frustratingly cliched and unrealistically written characters.  In my review of that book, I remember writing how much I loathed the characters (especially the main protagonist Caroline), whose actions and behavior would get more ridiculous and outrageous the more the story progressed.  Unfortunately, Campbell's newly released fourth novel The Wife Who Knew Too Much was plagued by pretty much the same issues as her previous book — the execution was poor and the characters were absolutely loathsome.  Actually, in my opinion, the characters in this story — especially the main character Tabitha — were way worse....I disliked most of them from the very first page.  Its not often that I react in such a negative manner to characters in a fictional story, but Tabitha truly did get on my nerves.  Perhaps I'm tired of reading about middle-aged women who are immature and childish and come across like petulant teenagers, or who are portrayed as naive and overly emotional and incapable of thinking rationally.  Tabitha is the type of character I can't stand — indecisive, foolish, immature — throughout the entire story, she knowingly makes poor choices over and over (and over and over and over) again, and if that's not bad enough, whenever things go south because of those choices, the main reaction is to whine and cry and beat herself up for being foolish (the word "stupid" is more appropriate but a bit too harsh)...then, instead of learning from her mistakes and trying to fix them, she pushes all rational thought away and dives headfirst back into the foolishness that had gotten her burned in the first place.  It's hard to dislike a character so much that you end up having zero sympathy for them as well as not caring one bit what happens to them, but that's definitely how I felt about Tabitha (and all the characters in this story, for that matter).  Don't get me wrong — I have no problems with flawed characters, as those flaws are usually what makes characters realistic, but the characters in this story were beyond flawed...Tabitha, Connor, Nina, and  just about every other character in here were so cliched and stereotypically drawn that they essentially became caricatures.

Aside from the characters, the other thing that annoyed me was the plot, which I found to be ridiculously contrived from beginning to end.  It's one thing for a plot to be predictable, but entirely another when it veers into "outlandish" territory, to the point that I have to suspend disbelief every step of the way.  Barely halfway through the story, I got so annoyed that I started skimming through to the end, which I'm glad I did because I know if I had read it word for word, I probably would've thrown my Kindle across the room in frustration. The writing itself was also a problem for me, as it felt very elementary and clunky, plus the fact that, as the main character, Tabitha narrated the story from her first person point of view made it so much worse, as I got fed up hearing her go back and forth trying to rationalize every dumb decision she made.  

After 2 books in a row that left a bad taste in my mouth, I think I'm officially done with this author, at least for now.  With that said though, I don't want to discourage anyone from reading this if they so choose, as not everyone will have the same negative experience I did. So definitely check out other reviews first before deciding.

Received ARC from St. Martin's Press via NetGalley

Review: A Stranger on the Beach (by Michele Campbell)

My Rating: 2.5 stars

Let me just say right off the bat that my opinion of this book is clearly the minority view, so if you were strongly considering reading this book, I would suggest also checking out the higher-rated reviews as well for a more well-rounded assessment.  

This is actually the second book that I’ve read by Michele Campbell (the first one being her sophomore novel She Was the Quiet One) and seeing that I had enjoyed her previous work, I had high hopes going into this one.  Unfortunately, this book turned out to be very different from what I expected, and not in a good way either.  The biggest problem I had was with the structure of the narrative, especially the first two-thirds of the story, which switched back and forth between the point of view of Caroline Stark (a 43-year-old rich woman with a mansion on the beach) and Aidan Callahan (a 27-year-old bartender with a questionable past) – normally this wouldn’t be a problem, but with this story, it was particularly confusing because the exact same events / situations would be told in completely opposite ways, so as I’m reading, I have no clue who is telling the truth and how things really happened.  Though I get what Campbell was trying to do by structuring the first two-thirds of the book this way with the whole unreliable narrator thing, I think the reason why it didn’t work for me was because it was overdone and dragged out for way too long (basically there would be one chapter from Caroline’s perspective and then the next chapter would be from Aidan’s perspective, but describing essentially the same event – this went on for at least 40+ chapters, though to the author’s credit, the chapters were relatively short) – this made the story too tedious and a chore to read.

Structure of the narrative aside, the other major problem I had was the characters, all of whom were written in a way that they came across as clichéd and unrealistic – most important of all though, none of the characters were likable and not only was I not able to connect with any of them, I also couldn’t bring myself to feel an ounce of sympathy for them either.  Actually, come to think of it, “unlikeable” is too nice a word -- “loathsome” is a better fit for how I felt about most of the characters, though in the case of Caroline, I would probably go even harsher.  Caroline actually got progressively more loathsome and annoying as the story went on, to the point that near the halfway mark, I finally got fed up and decided to skim through the rest of the book so I could still get a general idea of the plot without having to endure any more of Caroline’s stupidities (sorry, don’t know how else to say it).  I’ve said before how much I can’t stand characters that are written in a stereotypical way – well, in this book, every single character is portrayed in this manner, but not only that, their actions actually get more and more ridiculous and outrageous with each chapter (Caroline especially here, as she not only kept making poor choices over and over again, she also kept whining about those choices, made no attempts whatsoever to fix the messes she caused, then tried to blame others attempting to help her for petty things like “stressing” her out or calling her at the wrong time...and that’s just scratching the surface of her “antics”).  The characters as well as the direction in which the story seemed to be headed (which was essentially nowhere at that point) became such a huge source of frustration for me  that I was actually tempted to DNF the book in order to preserve my sanity -- the only reason I didn’t go that route was because I was past the halfway mark already and I figured, given all the time I wasted reading the book up to this point, I was at least owed the “satisfaction” of seeing how it ends (more specifically, I wanted to see what type of comeuppance, if any, the characters would get).  

I don’t want to say too much more, as I’m afraid I might end up giving the story away through all the complaints I have about the characters and their actions (with Caroline, I had actually written down 2 full pages of things that annoyed me about her – and that was only from the first half of the story before I started skimming!).  Again though, I’m the outlier here, as everyone else seemed to like this more than I did, so perhaps this book just didn’t jive with me.  As for this author’s other works, I’m actually on the fence as to whether I will continue to pick up another of her books – on the one hand, this is a repeat author for me and I truly did like her previous work, but on the other hand, this book left such a bad taste in my mouth that I don’t know if it will tarnish my expectations of her next book.  I guess we will have to see what happens….

Received ARC from St. Martin’s Press via NetGalley

Review: She Was the Quiet One (by Michele Campbell)

My Rating: 4 stars

As is the case with most thriller/suspense novels that I read, my review will be relatively short, since I believe it's always best to go into these types of books knowing as little as possible. I will admit that I was a little put off at first from reading this book, as I read in the summary that the story revolves around a murder mystery at a boarding school and quite honestly, this past year, I had already read more than 1 book with this same setup.  However, I decided to give it a go and am glad I did, as this one turned out to be a pleasant surprise.  Most books with this type of theme usually have a narrative that focuses primarily on the students at the school and the various trouble they get into, with the teachers and/or faculty usually only briefly mentioned as side characters -- this one was different in that two of the central characters the narrative revolved around were actually teachers at the school and their roles in advancing the plot were equally as important as the students.   With that said though, I didn't particularly like any of the characters and actually found myself getting increasingly frustrated with some of them as the story moved along, but that didn't prevent me from enjoying the overall story, which was quite compellingly written.  The narrative format, alternating between the viewpoints of various characters interspersed with witness testimony from the police interrogation, actually worked really well in this instance – I liked that the testimony was worked cleverly into the plot in a way that helped build up suspense but without giving anything away.

Overall, I enjoyed this one, as the story was engaging and kept me turning the pages, despite the fact that I had already figured out most of the "mystery" early on.  Perhaps I am getting better at figuring these things out now, but I felt that, while it definitely had its suspenseful moments, this was not the type of story that was filled with so many twists and turns that it ended up feeling like a roller coaster ride.  The only real twist was in the Epilogue, which I thought was cleverly done in that it was unexpected, though not necessarily shocking.  My only real complaint is the ending, which felt a bit rushed to me and was also a little too predictable, to the point of feeling anti-climactic, but luckily it didn't detract too much from the rest of the story, at least not for me.

She Was the Quiet One is the second suspense / thriller attempt by new author Michele Campbell.  I haven't yet read her first book It's Always the Husband, which came out last year, but I have that one on my TBR and do intend to read it one of these days.  While I can't comment on how Campbell's sophomore effort measures up to her first, I will say that this one was encouraging enough to get me interested in reading more from this author.

Received ARC from St. Martin's Press via NetGalley