My, What a Mess

I usually only blog about books and shows that I have enjoyed to the end. While I did enjoy parts of this book, by the end, I was left shaking my head at the nonsense.

Eden Fox goes for a run one morning with only the key to her new home, Spyglass, that she and her husband recently purchased in the seaside town of Hope Falls. When Eden returns from her run, she finds her key no longer fits the lock of Spyglass, and someone who happens to look a lot like her, just a bit older, has answered the door claiming to be the real Eden.

Befuddled, runner Eden confronts both her husband, Harrison, and this doppelganger, trying to understand what has happened, but ends up exasperated and denied entry to her home. Eventually, after the local police are called on her, Eden runs and keeps running until she gets some form of explanation for why she was replaced and why her own husband went along with the scam.

6 months prior to this incident, a reclusive Londoner, Birdy, discovers she has a terminal illness and decides that a trip to Spyglass, where her grandmother met her demise, is in order before she succumbs to her illness.

The premise of the book sounds amazing, and maybe it could have been. However, the book takes huge liberties, in my opinion, with how normal humans would behave with one another, even how far one might go to lie to oneself internally. There were leaps I had to make to even consider that the several 'twists' the author tried to pull off in the story were remotely plausible. To say that the mystery surrounding what was really happening was a reach is giving this plot, full of very large holes, too much credit to be honest.

The icing on the cake for me, an indie author, was the apparent dig from a well-known author on the 'indie boom' that the literary world is experiencing. I myself have seen many once-unknown authors make some headway in the spaces usually reserved only for authors who have landed deals with big publishers. Within the story, during an interaction in an art studio, a character says, "Everyone thinks they are an artist nowadays, just like everyone thinks they have a book in them." It seemed like an apparent, unnecessary dig from an already well-established and successful author such as Alice Feeney.

I typically enjoy this author's books. And I believe I have read every single one she has written and been totally blown away by the twists and turns and the shocking revelations that she conjures. But this one was a miss for me and will have me, honestly, second-guessing my typical response of grabbing her latest as soon as it hits shelves. If you give it a try, I would love your feedback as a fellow reader. What am I missing here?

Happy reading, friends!