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A review by srussell94
The Stranger Inside by Jennifer Jaynes
2.0
I was so disappointed!
This book did keep me guessing until the end, but... The end was very disappointing, and although I was interested in the whodunit aspect, I also spent a lot of the novel disliking the daughter's character. The reveal of who the murderer is was surprising--I had a moment, while reading, where I thought, "Maybe??" but then I dismissed it, and so when it was revealed I was like, okay, makes sense but not obvious...The disappointment to me came from the actual, literal ending to the book. But that'll all have to be discussed under the spoilers bar.
In short, if you haven't read this and are thinking about it--maybe save it for when you don't have anything else to read. Because...there's not a lot that's spectacular or innovative about this book, and the ending is kind of unsatisfactory.
Avast, mateys! SPOILERS-HO! Keep any lily-livered eyes above the dreaded line.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Having said that: I hated Alexa's character. Maybe it was because of the symptoms of depression, but she spent the entire novel blaming other people for her problems and feeling sorry for herself, even after she admitted to herself that she was the real source of her problems. The way she carelessly dug through her mom and Rick's things without any regard to their privacy, the way she stole from her mother (did she really think the mom wouldn't notice half her sleeping pills were gone??), even the way she sneaks into the kitchen and steals some vodka on the night she's planning to apologize to her mother and brother.... It made me dislike her, and so reading parts of the story in her POV just kind of turned me off. I felt like, even though she says she was going to start making an effort, she never really did, and I think part of the problem with that is that the audience is apparently supposed to believe that she genuinely is making an effort and getting better. But she isn't. And again, I recognize that progress takes time and that, in real like, no one magically is cured of depression via a realization that they need to make a change in their life. But this isn't a novel about depression or treating depression or about a depressed character--it's a novel about a series of murders. And it felt like, sometimes, this novel didn't know which direction it wanted to go in--"family healing from past trauma and current mental issues" or "whodunit serial killer thriller"? And so both aspects of the novel suffered from lack of attention.
On the note of the depression/treatment & its depiction suffering from lack of attention: I have a serious, albeit minor, issue with how medication is treated within this novel. Both siblings have experiences using antidepressants or antianxiety medication and the conclusion both of them seem to reach at the end of the novel is that they're more harmful than good/that they don't do anything so why bother with them at all. That's kind of irritating, to me, because we know (or I should hope, at least, that we know) medication does treat mental illnesses and, in a lot of cases, people simply can't get better without them. This novel seems to feed into the idea that people can simply "think their way" through a depression if they just "try hard enough"--and that's just not true. Feeding that idea gives it traction and makes it even more dangerous than it already is.
But I digress, and will step off of that particular soapbox for now.
As far as the actual "mystery" side of it... I didn't like that Josh was the killer. Firstly, my first thought was "Where the hell do you go from there?" because, in my head, the options were either "he's arrested, goes to jail forever" or "he gets away with it, they live with a murderer forever." Neither option seemed like an ending that would provide satisfaction or closure to the reader. And then, of course, Jaynes offered two totally different options: "He dies via self-inflicted gun shot wounds to the head" or "The entire family whisks themselves away and runs from the law" with a side serving of "maybe the brain damage would cure the serial killer tendencies??"
Whoops, I found my soapbox again:
Jaynes seems to have some very strange views of mental illness. By having the doctors say that the "frontal lobe" damage may cause "personality changes" in Josh, she as an author is implying to the readers that there's a possibility Josh will wake up and be magically cured of his psychosis... Obviously, yes, frontal lobe damage can have an effect on people's moods, behaviors, and personalities. But suggesting that shooting yourself at just the right angle can cure people of psychopathy sounds a bit too uncomfortably close to suggesting lobotomies were right all along to me and also, teeters frighteningly close to advocating, in a kind of backwards, twisted reading, that people who experience these urges attempt self-inflicted brain trauma in order to "fix" them. Jaynes also implies throughout the novel that Josh has no choice in his actions due to the "voices" and that his actions are a result of his nature--IE, he was born that way and always would have turned out that way.
It's frustrating because again we're seeing the "person with mental illness=uncontrollable psychotic animal" trope arise once more, and I would hope, at this point, that I don't have to explain to anyone why that idea is completely wrong and dangerous.
...Again, I digress and step down from the soapbox.
Josh being the killer made sense in terms of the story--by the end of it, I didn't see anyone else who could have been it--but I didn't like it. It felt cheap, to me, especially after the last section from the killer's POV where he calls the main character Diane. As soon as Josh was revealed to be a killer, I called foul play on that POV section, because Josh always called his mom mom, and so the only reason he called her Diane there was to avoid letting readers know who it was. Which is a pet peeve of mine. Don't break your characters to fit your plot twists. It's irritating.
But after I accepted, reluctantly, that Josh really was the killer, the ending just kind of felt...anticlimactic? I'm not sure if that's the word I want. I was disappointed. When Josh shot himself, I thought, for a second, that maybe it wouldn't be a terrible ending--Diane and Alexa could move on from this new trauma together, remembering their son as they knew him, etc. But then...Josh was still alive? And they chose to run? Why wouldn't they want for him to get some sort of mental help, which he clearly desperately needs? Why would it be so terrible for him to be in jail? Diane and Alexa seem to disregard the fact that Josh killed three women; despite what Diane says about "crying for the victims," her actions show that she clearly doesn't care about them or their families' pain.
To be honest, by the end of the story, I started thinking about how much I would have rather read the story that comes after this one ends: a mother, her depressed-but-trying-to-get-over-it daughter, and the mom's new BF who's ex military and clearly has issues of his own, traveling through the country with a possibly-healed-and-all-better, possibly-still-a-serial-killer son, evading law enforcement and trying to rebuild their lives despite the fact that they never really had a life together to begin with. In that novel, you could explore mental illness, the repercussions of brain trauma, Rick's war trauma, and the mom's relationship with Alexa, and then, in the background, you have the killings start again--but is it Josh, who's starting to really seem better, like himself but without the anxiety? Or is it someone else? And in that novel, you would also get to really explore the notion of guilt, both through Josh's eyes as someone who has killed but apparently didn't want to, and through his mom and Alexa's eyes, who helped him evade justice (and possibly helped set him free to kill more people).
...But that's not the story we got.
This book did keep me guessing until the end, but... The end was very disappointing, and although I was interested in the whodunit aspect, I also spent a lot of the novel disliking the daughter's character. The reveal of who the murderer is was surprising--I had a moment, while reading, where I thought, "Maybe??" but then I dismissed it, and so when it was revealed I was like, okay, makes sense but not obvious...The disappointment to me came from the actual, literal ending to the book. But that'll all have to be discussed under the spoilers bar.
In short, if you haven't read this and are thinking about it--maybe save it for when you don't have anything else to read. Because...there's not a lot that's spectacular or innovative about this book, and the ending is kind of unsatisfactory.
Avast, mateys! SPOILERS-HO! Keep any lily-livered eyes above the dreaded line.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Spoiler
Okay, so, first: the daughter's character. This is kind of a tough thing for me to criticize because, obviously, the daughter is in the throes of a very serious and very dark depression. And Jaynes's portrayal of that was very realistic and lifelike. I want to make it clear, before I go on, that obviously depictions of depression are important and that a lot of books do tend to romanticize it so realistic depictions are even more important. Recognizing signs of depression, supporting people who have it, helping people get treatment, all of that is very important.Having said that: I hated Alexa's character. Maybe it was because of the symptoms of depression, but she spent the entire novel blaming other people for her problems and feeling sorry for herself, even after she admitted to herself that she was the real source of her problems. The way she carelessly dug through her mom and Rick's things without any regard to their privacy, the way she stole from her mother (did she really think the mom wouldn't notice half her sleeping pills were gone??), even the way she sneaks into the kitchen and steals some vodka on the night she's planning to apologize to her mother and brother.... It made me dislike her, and so reading parts of the story in her POV just kind of turned me off. I felt like, even though she says she was going to start making an effort, she never really did, and I think part of the problem with that is that the audience is apparently supposed to believe that she genuinely is making an effort and getting better. But she isn't. And again, I recognize that progress takes time and that, in real like, no one magically is cured of depression via a realization that they need to make a change in their life. But this isn't a novel about depression or treating depression or about a depressed character--it's a novel about a series of murders. And it felt like, sometimes, this novel didn't know which direction it wanted to go in--"family healing from past trauma and current mental issues" or "whodunit serial killer thriller"? And so both aspects of the novel suffered from lack of attention.
On the note of the depression/treatment & its depiction suffering from lack of attention: I have a serious, albeit minor, issue with how medication is treated within this novel. Both siblings have experiences using antidepressants or antianxiety medication and the conclusion both of them seem to reach at the end of the novel is that they're more harmful than good/that they don't do anything so why bother with them at all. That's kind of irritating, to me, because we know (or I should hope, at least, that we know) medication does treat mental illnesses and, in a lot of cases, people simply can't get better without them. This novel seems to feed into the idea that people can simply "think their way" through a depression if they just "try hard enough"--and that's just not true. Feeding that idea gives it traction and makes it even more dangerous than it already is.
But I digress, and will step off of that particular soapbox for now.
As far as the actual "mystery" side of it... I didn't like that Josh was the killer. Firstly, my first thought was "Where the hell do you go from there?" because, in my head, the options were either "he's arrested, goes to jail forever" or "he gets away with it, they live with a murderer forever." Neither option seemed like an ending that would provide satisfaction or closure to the reader. And then, of course, Jaynes offered two totally different options: "He dies via self-inflicted gun shot wounds to the head" or "The entire family whisks themselves away and runs from the law" with a side serving of "maybe the brain damage would cure the serial killer tendencies??"
Whoops, I found my soapbox again:
Jaynes seems to have some very strange views of mental illness. By having the doctors say that the "frontal lobe" damage may cause "personality changes" in Josh, she as an author is implying to the readers that there's a possibility Josh will wake up and be magically cured of his psychosis... Obviously, yes, frontal lobe damage can have an effect on people's moods, behaviors, and personalities. But suggesting that shooting yourself at just the right angle can cure people of psychopathy sounds a bit too uncomfortably close to suggesting lobotomies were right all along to me and also, teeters frighteningly close to advocating, in a kind of backwards, twisted reading, that people who experience these urges attempt self-inflicted brain trauma in order to "fix" them. Jaynes also implies throughout the novel that Josh has no choice in his actions due to the "voices" and that his actions are a result of his nature--IE, he was born that way and always would have turned out that way.
It's frustrating because again we're seeing the "person with mental illness=uncontrollable psychotic animal" trope arise once more, and I would hope, at this point, that I don't have to explain to anyone why that idea is completely wrong and dangerous.
...Again, I digress and step down from the soapbox.
Josh being the killer made sense in terms of the story--by the end of it, I didn't see anyone else who could have been it--but I didn't like it. It felt cheap, to me, especially after the last section from the killer's POV where he calls the main character Diane. As soon as Josh was revealed to be a killer, I called foul play on that POV section, because Josh always called his mom mom, and so the only reason he called her Diane there was to avoid letting readers know who it was. Which is a pet peeve of mine. Don't break your characters to fit your plot twists. It's irritating.
But after I accepted, reluctantly, that Josh really was the killer, the ending just kind of felt...anticlimactic? I'm not sure if that's the word I want. I was disappointed. When Josh shot himself, I thought, for a second, that maybe it wouldn't be a terrible ending--Diane and Alexa could move on from this new trauma together, remembering their son as they knew him, etc. But then...Josh was still alive? And they chose to run? Why wouldn't they want for him to get some sort of mental help, which he clearly desperately needs? Why would it be so terrible for him to be in jail? Diane and Alexa seem to disregard the fact that Josh killed three women; despite what Diane says about "crying for the victims," her actions show that she clearly doesn't care about them or their families' pain.
To be honest, by the end of the story, I started thinking about how much I would have rather read the story that comes after this one ends: a mother, her depressed-but-trying-to-get-over-it daughter, and the mom's new BF who's ex military and clearly has issues of his own, traveling through the country with a possibly-healed-and-all-better, possibly-still-a-serial-killer son, evading law enforcement and trying to rebuild their lives despite the fact that they never really had a life together to begin with. In that novel, you could explore mental illness, the repercussions of brain trauma, Rick's war trauma, and the mom's relationship with Alexa, and then, in the background, you have the killings start again--but is it Josh, who's starting to really seem better, like himself but without the anxiety? Or is it someone else? And in that novel, you would also get to really explore the notion of guilt, both through Josh's eyes as someone who has killed but apparently didn't want to, and through his mom and Alexa's eyes, who helped him evade justice (and possibly helped set him free to kill more people).
...But that's not the story we got.