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A review by minimicropup
Don't Believe It by Charlie Donlea
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.0
Performative, effusive, quixotic.
We follow a documentary filmmaker taking on the case of a young couple, one of which was accused of murdering the other at a friend's wedding..
๐บ๐ธ ๐ฑ๐จSet in Manhattan, NY over the course of June and July 2017, with snippets of the documentary outlining the events at a Saint Lucian resort in 2007.
๐บ๐Growls, Howls, and Tail Wags:
๐ฅฑ This was a slog for me. It started off interesting and went downhill pretty fast. I liked the overall plot but struggled to get through how this was written. I spent most of the book wanting to get back to the original premise and mystery.
๐ Imagination smashing. We are introduced to so many characters, some that are almost a one-off, and we never get any descriptions of any of them. That's fine, it's just the type of story where we can imagine people as we wish, right? Wrong. One of the main characters (Sidney) is not described until past the 50% mark.
๐ฃ Fragmented. Not in a good way. Didn't contribute to mystery, only frustration from the lack of focus. I felt like especially in the second half, we would get random jury information, chapters about political people and federal investigators where it read like a list of how they find out about the documentary findings, but in the process we lose the documentary angle almost entirely.
๐คฅ Suspend that disbelief. A medical examiner is filmed bashing in corpse heads as part of an experiment to see if their head wounds will match the original crime.... She just asked the medical dept if they had extra bodies while acknowledging there are ways to do this without beating up dead people who donated their bodies to science. Is this really a thing? Contrived interviews where most people either spill their guts or "accidentally" spill their guts then remember they're being recorded.
๐ฅด Do you want to read a weekly planner and meeting agendas? You'll love this! I swear there are entire chapters where most of it is just "___ will send the footage to ____, then ____ will edit and review, in time for ____ to get their post-production team on it for release by 9 am tomorrow, so we can follow up with ____ and ____ for their 10 am meeting." I'm BARELY exaggerating.
๐ Take the above and repeat. Essentially by the 50% mark all the documentary investigative reporting facts are rehashed to us along with meeting details and viewership numbers. It's repetitive and irrelevant to character development and plot. It felt like 14 people wrote this and none read what the others already covered.
๐ซ Overexplainy, contrived dialogue. In a staff meeting at a cable station, one of them has a long winded explanation what Neilson ratings are and how streaming works, as if no one in the room knows. It wasn't even angled as, like, he can't read the room. There are several instances of this where dialogue is used to "educate" the reader instead of just telling us straight up if we really need to know.
๐คจ You know what could be fun? Introducing an important character by listing their day-to-day struggles to get to the bathroom. Do that for a couple chapters. We have NO idea who this person is and why we have so much detail on their day-to-day life (which is basically the same every day). Then they suddenly become a main character at around the 60% mark.
๐ Imagination smashing. We are introduced to so many characters, some that are almost a one-off, and we never get any descriptions of any of them. That's fine, it's just the type of story where we can imagine people as we wish, right? Wrong. One of the main characters (Sidney) is not described until past the 50% mark.
๐ฃ Fragmented. Not in a good way. Didn't contribute to mystery, only frustration from the lack of focus. I felt like especially in the second half, we would get random jury information, chapters about political people and federal investigators where it read like a list of how they find out about the documentary findings, but in the process we lose the documentary angle almost entirely.
๐คฅ Suspend that disbelief. A medical examiner is filmed bashing in corpse heads as part of an experiment to see if their head wounds will match the original crime.... She just asked the medical dept if they had extra bodies while acknowledging there are ways to do this without beating up dead people who donated their bodies to science. Is this really a thing? Contrived interviews where most people either spill their guts or "accidentally" spill their guts then remember they're being recorded.
๐ฅด Do you want to read a weekly planner and meeting agendas? You'll love this! I swear there are entire chapters where most of it is just "___ will send the footage to ____, then ____ will edit and review, in time for ____ to get their post-production team on it for release by 9 am tomorrow, so we can follow up with ____ and ____ for their 10 am meeting." I'm BARELY exaggerating.
๐ Take the above and repeat. Essentially by the 50% mark all the documentary investigative reporting facts are rehashed to us along with meeting details and viewership numbers. It's repetitive and irrelevant to character development and plot. It felt like 14 people wrote this and none read what the others already covered.
๐ซ Overexplainy, contrived dialogue. In a staff meeting at a cable station, one of them has a long winded explanation what Neilson ratings are and how streaming works, as if no one in the room knows. It wasn't even angled as, like, he can't read the room. There are several instances of this where dialogue is used to "educate" the reader instead of just telling us straight up if we really need to know.
๐คจ You know what could be fun? Introducing an important character by listing their day-to-day struggles to get to the bathroom. Do that for a couple chapters. We have NO idea who this person is and why we have so much detail on their day-to-day life (which is basically the same every day). Then they suddenly become a main character at around the 60% mark.
Mood Reading Match Up:
- Touches of investigative journalism excerpts
- Detailed documentary production behind-the-scenes fiction
- True crime whodunnit energy
- Vacay isolated resort suspense
Content Heads-Up: Murder. Possible false accusation. Ableism. Car accident (life-altering injury). Drunk driving. Traumatic brain injury and immobility.
Format: Library Digital via Libby
Content Warnings
Moderate: Ableism, Forced institutionalization, Car accident, and Murder
Minor: Alcohol