The story is narrated from a dual perspective; those of Sarah and Adam. Adam knows he is innocent, and yet his reckless actions while under house arrest are not going to make him look good in court. While Sarah searches for evidence to prove him innocent, Adam conducts his own investigation in parallel. He needs to know the truth.
I always love a whodunnit, especially a courtroom drama, but this one felt somewhat lacking. A lot of the characters felt unidimensional, especially Adam. While the author did a good job of portraying him as pathetic, that was all there was to it, without any further nuance. I wonder if that was intentional, and if yes, what purpose it served. Despite that, Andrew Eiden was an outstanding narrator, inserting bleakness into his voice, and adding to Adam's narrative, uplifting the book in its quality. The final chapters had some of the best narration I have ever heard.
The police officers were remarkably indistinguishable from one another, although that may just be one of the disadvantages of listening to an audiobook over reading a book. Adam's mother, Eleanor, was irksome in her treatment to Sarah, which of course made me very sympathetic to Sarah. The doting mother-in-law who thinks her son can do absolutely no wrong and thinks her daughter-in-law is worthless is not an uncommon trope in books. It is unfortunately very true even in real life. However, it felt overdone to a point where I felt like I was listening to a bad soap opera, and wished they would move on with the story already. In general, something just didn't sit right about the characters' reactions; it was all too melodramatic for me. I love seeing strong and successful women portrayed in books, who completely own their futures and have enough of a self-esteem to take what is rightfully theirs. Other than that, I did not feel like there was anything special about Sarah's character. Mozhan Navabi delivered quite an admirable performance, though.
That being said, I was still hooked. The writing style was gripping enough for me to complete the audiobook in two days (mind you, that's nine hours of listening). It was fun to pick up on when characters acted suspiciously and formulate my theories about the killer, as is the case with any good crime or mystery novel. However, the ending left me completely disappointed. When I finally found out who it was, I couldn't help wondering why I spent all those hours of my life hanging on to every word for this underwhelming answer. I am not sure if a lot of the plot is deep psychology I do not understand, or if it just needed to be better planned out. A lot of the foreshadowing throughout the book felt too obvious. It seemed like the author had a certain idea of how she wanted things to go, and after coming to a conclusion, she went back and dropped hints here and there. I know this is an important part of the revision process for an author, and gives their readers something to think about, but it could have been done more subtly and organically, in my opinion.
Overall, I have very mixed feelings about this book. The fact that I could finish it this quickly says a lot about how the author's skill in keeping the pages turning (not that I had pages; it was an audiobook, after all). Otherwise, I would not give it full marks for plotting. This was, however, Jeneva Rose's debut novel, and an impressive effort. I do not doubt that by now, six years into the future, her writing has improved by leaps and bounds, and I hope to stumble across her more recent work soon.
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