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FindingJane
Aug 03, 2017FindingJane rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
For a study in sheer cold-blooded, smiling viciousness, this novel causes the chills to run up and down the spine. I felt like an ice-covered midget was running up and down my backbone, chuckling maniacally with every patter of its little feet. Reading the story from two different viewpoints, the reader is hauled in one direction and then another. Nick is an unreliable narrator, a liar and an adulterer (although the author prefers the word “cheater”). When his beautiful wife goes missing, all sorts of damning evidence, along with his own unconvincing act as the grieving, worried husband, serve to condemn him. The grand revelation is staggering, to be sure. But the novel does a terrific job of maintaining suspense, of racheting the tension through character and plot development long before the surprise is sprung upon the reader. This is a terrifying story of love gone wrong, of finding out the person you thought you knew is a cold-blooded murderer, a grudge-holding lunatic who yet manages to maintain a smiling façade capable of fooling everyone. The transparency of the modern age is brought fully to bear, further clouding the issue. When everything we learn and know is from television shows or blogs, can be manipulated or “spun” by video interviews, how can we know what is real? Just how much of a person is written in their diaries or on Facebook? This novel works you over, plumbing the depths of brutality within and without marriage. What happens when you love the wrong people, when you don’t know someone as well as you think you do? The novel ends on a quiet note but you can’t help but shiver at the thought of what horrors lie in store. It’s enough to keep single people unwed and married people awake at night.