Reviews

The Anniversary is intriguing, complex and overwhelming.

I'll start with overwhelming. The writing style took me ages to get into as I needed to revise my expectations (more centred around the mystery and circumstances that led to Patrick (J.B's husband) disappearing. For the first 50%, I felt like a headless chook trying to decipher if it was J.B. or Lucie (the protagonist's personal name), as the lines between fiction and non-fiction are blurred. However, the emotional response of numbness, wanting to escape and dissociativeness shone through.

When I hit the 60% mark, the book had my full attention as it was intriguing and complex. However, I've realised that this book is targeted at readers who appreciate the art of writing and love unreliable narration. I would advise readers to adjust their expectations as this story is about a woman spiralling about her choices and decisions before the anniversary cruise. In conclusion, it is a well-written psychological thriller with a hit-and-miss in keeping the readers wholly engaged.

Thank you, NetGalley & Grove Atlantic, for providing this e-ARC. This honest review is left voluntarily.

lonestarwords's review

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1.0

Well here we have a book with an enormous identity crisis. I always promise honest reviews but it was very hard to be constructive here.
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What is wild is that it is not the writing that’s the problem! In fact, the writing is pretty strong. But it’s as if someone told the author she needed to be more descriptive and she took that ball and ran wayyyy past the goal line and forgot she also needed a plot.
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The crux of this story is so simple. We have a couple whose marriage is on the rocks and they take an anniversary cruise. He falls overboard. Did she push him? Yep- that’s about it. But it’s not half bad for the first 2 hours or so- I actually thought I was in for a pretty good thriller. And the main character is an author who has just won a huge literary prize, so when section 2 launches into that I was all in. And then it just TANKS. I mean so badly that I wish you could have seen my face as this went ON AND ON AND ON with descriptions of things that have absolutely NO bearing in the story, don’t move the plot along, and frustrated me to the point of wanting to scream GET TO THE POINT.
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I cannot for the life of me figure out how an editor didn’t SLASH the heck out of this.
The actual story could have been 150 pages or 3 hours. But it’s 432 or almost 10 hours- and most of it is just blather.
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I don’t think the author knew what she wanted this to be- enter the identity crisis. The thriller aspect could have been interesting, but the on and on, over-describing of every single detail is as if she wanted to write literary fiction.
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I should have DNFd, but I got myself in too deep and thought “maybe something will happen?” NOPE! It does not.
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And thank you @librofm for this #gifted copy. Out 7/18. I don’t know if I was constructive but that did feel good and I deserved it.