For the last 48 days, New Zealand has been in lockdown in order to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Like most Kiwis who found themselves abruptly homebound for the foreseeable future, on the first day of quarantine I set a lofty list of goals for myself to achieve; however, three days in, I fell into an acute depression and abandoned the list for less ambitious pursuits, such as rewatching Brooklyn Nine-Nine for the tenth time, lying on my bed and staring at the ceiling, and cutting my own bangs. The one productive thing I managed to accomplish is particularly on-brand for me: I read 23 books while in self-isolation, and I thought it would be fun to review the five that I enjoyed the most.
5. A Good Neighbourhood by Therese Anne Fowler
(TW: Sexual abuse, suicide)
A Good Neighbourhood is a story about two families — the Alston-Holts and the Whitmans — who become neighbours when the Whitmans move to the tight-knit North Carolina suburb in which the Alston-Holts have lived all their lives. Brad Whitman, breadwinner of the Whitman clan, made a fortune by building an HVAC empire and cares little for the environmental impact made by the mansion he has built; Valerie Alston-Holt, a professor of forestry and ecology, is devastated when the magnificent oak tree in her backyard begins to die as its root structure is decimated by the construction next door. She files a lawsuit against Brad that sparks a vicious turf-war, the flames of which are fanned even further by the blossoming romance between Valerie’s son, Xavier, and Brad’s step-daughter, Juniper.
I did not expect to be so captivated by this novel, and to be fair, the beginning was pretty slow, but it was worth persevering for the incredible last 20% of the book. When it comes to stories about racism, sexism, and classism, I’ve come to expect a certain message and formula that are repeated over and over again in books, so most novels that tackle these hot-topic issues fail to impress me as they’re telling me what I already know. A Good Neighbourhood broke the chain: it’s an excellent portrayal of racism and white/male privilege that managed to incense me so acutely that I had to put the book down multiple times in order to rein in my fury. I was particularly taken by the emphasis this book placed on the ways that the criminal justice system in the United States serves white interests while failing people of colour, notably black men. In the engrossing final act of the novel, a wrongful conviction takes place because a white man is feeling jealous and spiteful, and it was infuriating to witness the way white men get away with whatever they please due to gross racial bias in the criminal justice system. As reported by the NAACP, African Americans are incarcerated at five times the rate of white people, while in 2009, 64% of juveniles prosecuted as adults were African American (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, 2020; Cooper, 2019). These shocking and vile statistics illustrate the message of racial injustice that A Good Neighbourhood depicts. This novel will make your blood boil, but in the best way: the way that makes you want to get out on the streets and make radical change. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants more insight into the racism and white privilege that remain pervasive in the criminal justice system to this day! (Gina Linetti voice: 🎵 raacism, raacism, raaaaciiiiismmmmm…. 🎵)
4. My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing
Gone Girl meets Mr. and Mrs. Smith meets How To Get Away With Murder in My Lovely Wife, a chilling thriller about a husband and wife who begin kidnapping and murdering young women in order to spice up their increasingly boring marriage. Everything is going well and they have managed to get away with three murders — one premeditated, two unplanned — and are planning their fourth when our nameless protagonist realises that something is amiss, that his wife’s depravity may extend deeper than he knew, and that they may no longer be on quite the same page about how far they are willing to go — if they were even on the same page in the first place.
My Lovely Wife is edge-of-your-seat entertaining from the moment it begins. The ominous premise is undeniably intriguing, and the novel delivered accordingly on all accounts, producing a story so compulsive and compelling that I finished it in a single day. The main characters are completely psychopathic, experiencing little to no empathy for their victims or remorse for their actions unless there are unexpected consequences, and that’s what makes them so fascinating: I couldn’t help sympathising with the nameless protagonist despite his murderous tendencies. The details of the plot are exquisitely mapped out, and keep you guessing at every turn. You’ll be questioning who and what you can trust constantly and changing your mind every other page, because Downing’s detached main character is both a villain and a victim, forcing you to empathise with the kind of person you would normally abhor. I would love to give an academic analysis of this book as I did for the previous book on this list, but honestly, there’s nothing particularly academic to discuss. My Lovely Wife is pure, unapologetic entertainment that will have you gasping out loud at every plot twist and whispering, “Oh, that’s so fucked,” to yourself at every gruesome detail, and I delighted in every nasty minute of it. If you love thrillers like I do, this is a unique — and uniquely twisted — take on the genre that you will not be able to put down.
3. Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane
Ask Again, Yes is a slow-burning family drama about two families, the Gleesons and the Stanhopes, whose breadwinners, Francis and Brian respectively, are partners in the NYPD and who live next door to each other in upstate New York in the early 1980s. We follow three generations of the two families, starting with the two rookie cops and ending with their grandchildren, but the story ultimately circles around Kate, Francis Gleeson’s youngest daughter, and Peter, Brian Stanhope’s only son, whose childhood friendship grows into a star-crossed romance after a violent tragedy sends the families spinning in opposite directions.
The premise of Ask Again, Yes instantly reminded me of Celeste Ng, which is high praise: I will read anything that Celeste Ng writes. I loved that this book didn’t rely heavily on plot — although the plot that is present is breath-taking in its suspense and devastation — but instead focused on developing the characters and creating rich, complex lives and personalities for each of them. Despite the ensemble cast of multiple extended families, by the end of the novel, you feel as if you know everyone intimately, and you care about them and their relationships more than you reasonably should, considering that they are fictional. It’s great to be able to spend so many years with these characters, because they don’t feel like characters; they feel like real people whom you are watching change and grow and learn from their mistakes. Kate and Peter are the centrepiece of the novel, and the A-plot concentrates on the development of their relationship throughout the years and the ripple effect that the novel’s defining tragedy has on the rest of their lives; however, I felt a particular kinship with Peter’s mother, Anne, an Irish immigrant whose unstable emotional state is generally misunderstood throughout the majority of the book. She remains undiagnosed throughout the novel (although I suspect bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder), but her wild mood swings and erratic behaviour force an irreparable wedge between the two families that she struggles, in later years, to dig out. To me, Anne represents the novel’s major themes of forgiveness and acceptance. The inciting incident and ensuing tragedy are undeniably Anne’s fault, but as the years pass and time dulls the razor-edged memory, it becomes possible to forgive her crime and acknowledge that she isn’t the black-and-white villain she is perceived to be; she’s a troubled woman who wasn’t getting the help she needed. She cannot be completely exonerated of her transgression, but she can, eventually, be forgiven, and I loved that this novel gave us enough time to watch as time filed down the edges of traumatic childhood memories, allowing compassion to slowly seep in. If you’re interested in family dramas, or you’re hunting for novels that are along the lines of the inimitable Celeste Ng, Ask Again, Yes is not one to miss.
2. Lock Every Door by Riley Sager
In Lock Every Door, Jules Larsen can’t catch a break: she’s just broken up with her boyfriend, can’t get a job, and is feeling generally sorry for herself, when an opportunity too good to pass up falls into her lap: an ad promising $12,000 in return for three months apartment-sitting an enormous studio in the Bartholomew, one of Manhattan’s highest-profile and most enigmatic apartment building. The rules of the job seem harmless enough: no visitors, no nights spent away from the apartment, and no disturbing the Bartholomew’s other residents, all of whom are rich and extremely elusive. Jules eagerly accepts the offer, and when her downstairs neighbour, Ingrid, expresses concerns about the previous apartment sitter before Jules and says that the dark history and rumours surrounding the building are beginning to frighten her, Jules brushes her off as just another eccentric resident. The next day, however, Ingrid has disappeared without a trace, and Jules begins to suspect that Ingrid was onto something, and everything at the Bartholomew really is not as it seems.
Lock Every Door was a rollercoaster ride from start to finish. I read it all in one day and was completely ensnared by its riveting plot and suspenseful mystery — and seriously, the suspense was unbearable in the best possible way. The anxiety and dread that I experienced while reading were painful, and at times I was so on edge that unexpected noises in my bedroom would startle me. We know from page one that something is horribly wrong — the prologue begins with Jules waking up in a hospital and begging not to be sent back to the Bartholomew — but we don’t learn exactly what terrible things are taking place for another 300 pages, and are left to speculate and hypothesise as Sager slowly lets details slip, without ever revealing enough for you to figure out the truth until he’s ready for you to learn it. The details of the mystery were dished out at a tantalising pace that kept you both well-fed but still needing more, and they were clever enough that I was able to pick up on them without knowing how or why they fit into the story. And yet considering what ended up happening in the final act, I didn’t find this book melodramatic at all. Frightening, yes; a little bit unhinged, absolutely, but melodrama was never present; indeed the climax, while certainly out of left field, had the perfect tone considering the preceding suspense, and was incredibly original, too — I’ve never read anything that compares to the wonderfully weird plot twist at the end of this book. Overall, Lock Every Door was an immensely satisfying read: I was spooked but not too scared to sleep, I was intrigued but not completely lost, and the ending wraps everything up nicely instead of leaving loose ends for me to tie up myself, which I much prefer to open endings. I can’t speak more highly of this book, and it’s a close contender for the best book I read while in quarantine. It has a fantastic mystery, a compellingly spooky and Gothic atmosphere, and an ending so imaginative that I cannot stop thinking about it. I would highly recommend this to anyone looking for a thriller with a strong mystery element, as well as everyone who loves haunted house stories: the Bartholomew may not be literally haunted, but its dark history is haunting as hell.
1. The Good Daughter by Karin Slaughter (TW: Rape)
The Good Daughter is a crime fiction thriller about two sisters, Sam and Charlie Quinn, whose childhood is violently blown apart by a terrifying attack on their family home in Pikeville, Georgia. Their father, Rusty, is a defense attorney whose notoriety as the man who will defend anybody no matter their crime makes him the subject of many targeted attacks, the worst of which is the novel’s inciting incident and leaves his wife murdered, his eldest daughter crippled, and his youngest daughter emotionally scarred. Twenty-eight years later, Charlie has followed in Rusty’s footsteps and become a lawyer herself. When she finds herself in the middle of a school shooting, she becomes the prime witness in a court case that reminds her painfully of her tragic past, and old leads come unburied as she investigates what would motivate a naive teenage girl to commit cold-blooded murder in a middle school hallway.
God, I loved this book. Like the other two thrillers on this list, it’s completely gripping from the opening line, but in a different way to nasty My Lovely Wife or suspenseful Lock Every Door. The Good Daughter is not in a rush to reach its climax, but nor is it meandering: it sets a steady pace that is maintained throughout the novel and sets the perfect tone for the kind of story that unfolds. Despite the brutality that takes place, nothing is sensationalised; in fact, you could tell me that this book is true-crime non-fiction and I wouldn’t be that surprised. Yet despite the professional detachment with which the violence is viewed, this book still has so much heart, and makes you feel intensely for each character. Similar to Ask Again, Yes, this book asks us to consider scenarios from multiple points of view and empathise with people whom we would normally regard with utter contempt. An impressionable teen girl who brings a gun to school, a defense attorney who has helped some disreputable men go free because he believes everyone believes to be represented in the courtroom, a man who committed murder against his better judgment; perhaps these crimes cannot be forgiven (and in some cases, they most definitely should not be forgiven), but it is important to set our emotions aside and fight to find the truth. Additionally, Sam and Charlie Quinn are fascinating women with whom I loved spending time, and their troubled dynamic felt truly authentic considering their nightmarish adolescence. Both women screw up and regularly make questionable decisions that they later come to regret, but ultimately, they’re fighting for what they think is right and what they can justify doing, just like their father, and it’s their fallibility and humanity that make them so compelling to read. Crime fiction with female lead characters who both kick ass in the courtroom is quite possibly my new favourite genre in thrillers, and Karin Slaughter (and her amazingly apt surname) has quickly become an author from whom I will read anything. If you enjoy legal thrillers, I cannot stress how fantastic The Good Daughter is, and highly recommend that you read it.
Thank you for reading. Kia kaha x
WORKS CITED
- Cooper, K. J. (2019, March 12). Despite law on racial disparities, black teens are overly tried as adults. Retrieved from https://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/despite-law-racial-disparities-black-teens-are-overly-tried-adults#stream/0.
- National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People. (2020). Criminal Justice Fact Sheet. Retrieved from https://www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/.
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