A review by wathohuc
The Night Gwen Stacy Died by Sarah Bruni

4.0

Wonderful first novel. Creative idea and interesting experimentations with narration chronology. Most of the time, the jumping back and forth in the story's chronology worked, but sometimes it was a bit confusing. The shift in perspective between Gwen/Sheila and Peter/Seth in the retelling of the same events was very revealing and well-done. But when an author shifts back and forth in the chronology, the difficulty in keeping events in sync becomes all the more salient. Although Bruni managed to keep these details mostly in order, I did find one problematic oversight. It is this: Jake Novak knows that Sheila is the kidnap victim in the news media, and one presumes that he saw the same media that Sheila saw. But Sheila recognizes the name "Novak" when she sees it sewn on Jake's work uniform as the same last name given by the news media to describe her own "abductor" Peter Parker (I.e. Seth Novak). Yet when Sheila encounters and kidnaps Jake, even though he knows who she is from the media reports, he somehow doesn't seem to know that her own kidnapper was his brother. This defies credibility. Nevertheless, I give the book mad props for creativity in conception and very good, tight writing.