Release Date: January, 3 2023
Publisher: Dutton
Where to Buy: Bookshop
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Plot
While struggling with withdrawal from Klonopin, and self medicating with gin, Maya comes across a video that shocks and terrifies her. A young woman drops dead in a diner. Sitting across from this young woman is Maya’s ex-boyfriend Frank. This isn’t the first time Maya saw someone die in Frank’s presence. Seven years before, Maya’s best friend Aubrey died mysteriously while talking to Frank. Convinced there is a connection, and that she was right that Frank had something to do with Aubrey’s death, Maya decides to return home to find answers.
General Consensus
I felt the need to include this because my thoughts are so drastically different from what I have found online.
This book had some not so great reviews, which I read when I was half way through. I don’t think the reviews give it justice. The main complaint is that Maya is an unreliable narrator. But, aren’t we all? She’s going through withdrawal from a major anxiety medication, is dangerously inching into alcoholism, and experienced a major trauma at a young age. The makings of an unreliable narrator. I think a lot of people go to this point and thought, “Ugh, another Girl on the Train,” (this was an actual complaint) and lost all interest.
The next complaint is that it is not a true thriller. This book is thriller bordering on horror. In this case, that means it includes some supernatural characteristics not found in the typical thriller. Think Gone Girl with a little bit of The Shining.
My Thoughts
To me, this book is about vulnerability. What makes a person more susceptible to cults, con men, abusers, scams? Emotional or psychological vulnerability. Maya grew up with a single mother, a father who died violently before she was born, and the looming possibility of genetic psychosis. She meets Frank while reading the book her father never got to finish. She was a lost teenager trying to find a connection to her father.
The book goes back and forth between the present day as Maya tries to solve the mystery of her friend’s death, as well as the death of the woman in the diner, and the weeks she spent with Frank the summer before she went off to college. Maya is sleep deprived because of her dependence on Klonopin, consistently drunk or at least buzzed, and constantly questioning if this is just the psychosis that her aunt had.
To me, this is a thriller. There are two threats, Frank, and Maya’s mind. Is Frank somehow murdering young women, or is Maya slipping into paranoid schizophrenia like her aunt did? The ending is what dips it into horror, with a bit of what some people would consider magic. It just depends on what you believe about the mind and how it can be manipulated.
I can see why people were disappointed in the end, but she didn’t pull it out of nowhere. Clues throughout Maya’s story lead up to it. Was Maya an unreliable narrator? Yes. But she has witnesses and proof to back up her theories. Besides, there is a reason eyewitness testimonies only hold so much weight in court. We are all unreliable narrators of our own stories. Some of us just don’t want to admit that.
It wasn’t my favorite book and I’m not in a hurry to recommend it, but it was a good read and really made me think about how susceptible our minds our to manipulation. The ending was fine, I just don’t believe it’s possible, which is where it leans into the magic/supernatural realm for me.
Rating
3.5/5
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Alicia Coast 