Review: To Tell You the Truth (by Gilly Macmillan)

My Rating:  2.5 stars

In comparisons to August (during which time I surprised myself by reading a record 7 books in a month!), September is shaping up to be a slower reading month for me.  The past 2 weeks were unexpectedly busy and I had a few things going on that occupied my time.  I'm back into my regular reading schedule now though and have a few books lined up already so hopefully nothing else comes up between now and end of the month so I can use this last week and a half to "make up for lost time" where my reading is concerned. 

During this time period, the one book I was able to finish was Gilly Macmillan's latest psychological thriller To Tell You the Truth (scheduled for release 9/22).  Initially, I was excited going into this one, as the previous work of this author's that I'd read (I Know You Know from 2018), I had really enjoyed, so I was thinking this would be in the same vein.  It turns out I was completely wrong, and not in a good way either.  With this newest work, I actually came out of it confused, disappointed, and super annoyed — obviously a way different reaction from previous.  The main reason for my annoyance were the characters, all of whom were despicable and hugely unlikable, which, for me, isn't usually a problem as long as the rest of the story is done well — unfortunately, I can't say that was the case here.  I'll get into the issues I had with the story and plot later. First though, the characters...

One of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to psychological thrillers / suspense novels with an adult female protagonist at the center of the story is for her to be written in such a way that she comes across as wishy-washy, overly emotional, incapable of thinking rationally, lacking any sense of self-preservation and common sense, etc.  This is usually portrayed through the protagonist deciding to still go forward with things that she has already determined (through an inner dialogue with herself via first person narrative) are bad or will result in negative consequences — basically, the dialogue goes along the lines of "I knew I shouldn't, but I went along with it anyway" or "I should tell him no but the word yes comes out of my mouth instead".  The frustrating part is that the protagonist nonsensically makes these kinds of bad decisions repeatedly throughout the story and therefore keeps getting herself in predicaments that are entirely preventable.  Even if the protagonist is only like this for part of the story and they seem to "wisen up" somewhat later on, it still taints the entire story for me.

Unfortunately for me, the main protagonist of To Tell You the Truth, Lucy Harper, is exactly this type of character. In a way, it made me mad the way she was portrayed, since technically, the characterization could've gone several ways.  Lucy is a best-selling author who is supposedly smart and talented as heck and who has enjoyed a decades-long career writing multiple books that sold millions, but when she's not writing, she's basically walking around in a fog most of the time, willfully oblivious to anything that happens where her husband Daniel is concerned.  For example, Daniel uses Lucy's money to buy a million dollar mansion, puts only his own name on the deed, swiftly gives notice on the place where they are currently living so that they are forced to move within only a few days, etc. (yes, there is more, I just didn't list it all).  Here's the catch though: he does all this behind Lucy's back without discussing it with her.  What's worse is that the mansion is located just down the street from where Lucy lived as a child — a place that Lucy never wanted to go back to because of what had happened to her brother Teddy 30 years ago (Daniel has full knowledge of this and also knows full well the impact that Teddy's disappearance had on her).  When Daniel casually springs the sale of the house and the move, etc. on Lucy as though it's something perfectly normal that a doting husband does for his wife and she would be a fool not to go along with it, Lucy is supposedly angry (at least that's what she tells herself), but instead of making her disdain and objections known or confronting him about it or calling out his obvious selfishness, she just stands idly by and let's him do what he wants.  Even though she is seething inside and pissed off and can already see the train wreck waiting to happen financially (we know all this because the narrative is in first person), her actions speak otherwise, as she chooses the "naive, docile wife" route and basically ignores all the red flags starring her in the face.  It's also maddening that at various points in the story, it is inferred that Lucy's behavior is a result of her being psychotic or paranoid or whatnot and that she is not "right in the head."  To me, the entire characterization felt too stereotypical and convenient (not to mention downright annoying and frustrating).  I think it's interesting that this is the third psychological thriller / suspense novel I've read so far this year with this type of protagonist — either this is starting to become a trend now with this genre for some reason or I'm having incredibly bad luck with choosing the wrong thrillers to read.  

To make matters worse, Lucy actually wasn't the only annoying character.  I already mentioned earlier that nearly all the characters were unlikable — Daniel was obviously a douchebag, all of Lucy's neighbors were hateful people, and most of the other characters were either incompetent or insignificant in terms of the story.  All of them were honestly really frustrating to read about — which brings me to the issues I had with the execution of the story.  I don't want to go too much into the plot, as I don't want to give the story away, but there were quite a few plot holes involving some of the characters that honestly didn't make much sense and in the end, were left unresolved.  It was to the point where it made me wonder why those scenes with those characters were included in the first place.  The other thing I didn't like was that the last third of the story felt like a rushed exercise in "plot dumping" — essentially the plot details were dumped on the reader in swift succession, one right after the other, but some of it didn't make sense based on the progression of the story up to that point.  I also felt like some of the threads were left hanging in that some significant detail would get cryptically brought up in a scene that points to the thread going in a certain direction, but then the story ends without any reference back to it.  When I read mystery / thriller / suspense novels, I of course don't expect a straightforward, easy-to-figure-out ending delivered nicely in a box with a pretty bow on top (in fact, the opposite is true in that there should be some twists and turns and the plot should be unpredictable).  With that said though, one thing I do expect is closure, especially with the main story arc, which I didn't feel that I got in this instance (I don't want to say more — those who read the book will probably understand what I'm referring to).  

With all that said, this one wasn't all bad.  Parts of it truly were intriguing, plus I actually didn't guess the ending or what happened to Daniel, so I guess from a thriller perspective, it did its job.  The premise also had a lot of potential — I think Gilly Macmillan had the right idea, it's just she tried to cover too much ground and the story ended up getting away from her.  From her past works, I know she is capable of writing a cleverly crafted, compelling thriller with interesting and complicated characters — unfortunately, this one isn't it.  Despite the not-so-good experience with this one, I'm still interested in reading other works by this author, especially since I did have a good experience with her previous work.   Hopefully her next one will work out better for me.

Received ARC from William Morrow (HarperCollins) via NetGalley.

Review: I Know You Know (by Gilly Macmillan)

 My Rating: 4 stars

The summary for this book describes it as an “original, chilling, twisty mystery,” which I definitely feel is fitting, however I would also add one more word to that description:  clever!   This is one of those books where it’s best to go in knowing as little as possible and let the flow of the story take you on a ride that is at once thrilling and completely unpredictable!

I’ve read my fair share of thrillers / psychological suspense novels the past few years, but none of them have been quite as unique as this one.  At the heart of the story are two murder investigations that take place 20 years apart:  human remains are found at a construction site where a new shopping center was to be installed and almost immediately, when it is discovered that the remains were excavated from the exact same spot where the bodies of Charlie Paige and Scott Ashby -- two 11-year-old boys from a nearby housing estate who had been brutally murdered -- were found 20 years ago, a long-closed murder investigation is brought back into the spotlight.  At the same time, the boys’ childhood best friend Cody Swift, who narrowly escaped the same fate that Charlie and Scott endured, returns to Bristol – the town where he grew up and also where the murders took place – in a search for answers after being haunted by the deaths of his two friends for most of his life. He decides to use his experience as a filmmaker to produce a true crime podcast documenting his search in the hopes that people who might have been involved or knew anything about the case but were afraid to speak up previously would now come forth and set things straight.  Presented as entire chapters interspersed throughout the story, each episode of the podcast was narrated by Cody and featured interviews with people who had been involved with the investigation several decades ago as well as residents of the housing estate that was forever changed after the murders.  The rest of the chapters alternated between the perspectives of two other central characters in the story – Charlie’s mother Jessica Paige, who tries desperately to keep long-held secrets about the case buried, and also Detective John Fletcher, who had been the lead investigator on the original case and coincidentally was also the one who discovered the remains in the new case.  In addition to these alternating perspectives, the narrative also features a dual timeline, with each chapter covering both the case in the present as well as the one that took place in the past. 

Despite the many threads to the story, the author Gilly Macmillan was able to tie everything together brilliantly, creating a tautly-written page-turner that I honestly found very hard to put down.  As with most books from this genre, I picked up the clues throughout the story and thought I had everything all figured out, but then I got to the end and, well, all I am going to say is that I was completely wrong.  I don’t want to say too much about the ending of course, but I was definitely floored by the “surprise twist” (though admittedly there was also some “follow up” to the ending that I was expecting but never got so in that sense, it was a little less satisfying).  The other unique aspect with this story was the way the characters were written – I’m not going to go into much detail on this for fear of spoiling the story, but I will say that this was not the typical “protagonist vs antagonist” setup that we are used to seeing with these stories…with this one, the roles were far from clearly defined, which, for me, added another layer of complexity to the story. A word of caution – don’t be surprised if, by the time you get to the ending, you end up disliking every single character in this story….

Overall, I definitely enjoyed this one, though I did have a slight problem with the way the transitions were done between the dual timelines, which confused me at first (and since I read an ARC version, it didn’t help that the formatting was already a bit off).  I had to read the first two non-podcast chapters twice, but after I figured out the pattern, I was able to plow through the rest of the book without much issue.  Needless to say, this one is highly recommended!  I have not read Gilly Macmillan’s previous works but rest assured that I will be adding her other books to my TBR to read at a later date!

Received ARC from Harper Collins / William Morrow via Edelweiss.