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A review by tatterededges
Spare Room by Dreda Say Mitchell
4.0
I’m really quite unsure how to rate this book.
I really enjoyed reading it. It was well written, genuinely suspenseful with lots of unexpected plot twists. I couldn’t put it down but the ending completely bloody sucked.
But, as I’m sure I may have mentioned once or twice, my biggest pet hate in a book is when an author resorts to having one character explain the key plot points to another character. It’s lazy, it’s unimaginative and it bores the pants off me and this author, who was doing an amazing job of storytelling fell into this trap multiple times at the end. Why? She was doing so well.
Why the fuck wouldn’t her parents have just told her the truth. One conversation would have solved everything. Instead they held onto their lies despite clearly seeing it was destroying their daughter. It made no sense at all. They had nothing to lose by telling the truth.
And I have other questions,
Why didn’t she just take a photo of the writing on the wall, rather than risk her lease by having Alex come there?
Why do all the characters tolerate lying? It’s just constant throughout the whole book.
Why drink the LSD once she knew it was LSD? Surely pretending to have drunk it would have worked just as well, More-so when you consider she wouldn’t have been completely bent off her arse while somebody was trying to kill her?
Why, Other than the author being lazy and wanting to wrap shit up quickly, would Martha, or her parents have revealed any of their secrets to her? They’d all well and truly married that lie 20 years earlier. I don’t buy any of them coming clean.
Women who murder their children and suicide afterwards, don’t do it because they find out their husband has had an affair. This annoyed me because even the most basic of research into maternal filicide would tell you that. Why not write a more credible early trauma?
So I’m going to rate the book as 4 stars right up to chapter 37.
Chapters 37 through to 42 get 2 stars. Maybe 1 Star. Because it’s just characters explaining shit to each other.
43 onwards gets 3 stars because more stupid explaining of plot points, though less so than previous chapters, but never quite reverts back to the books earlier quality.
I really enjoyed reading it. It was well written, genuinely suspenseful with lots of unexpected plot twists. I couldn’t put it down but the ending completely bloody sucked.
But, as I’m sure I may have mentioned once or twice, my biggest pet hate in a book is when an author resorts to having one character explain the key plot points to another character. It’s lazy, it’s unimaginative and it bores the pants off me and this author, who was doing an amazing job of storytelling fell into this trap multiple times at the end. Why? She was doing so well.
Why the fuck wouldn’t her parents have just told her the truth. One conversation would have solved everything. Instead they held onto their lies despite clearly seeing it was destroying their daughter. It made no sense at all. They had nothing to lose by telling the truth.
And I have other questions,
Why didn’t she just take a photo of the writing on the wall, rather than risk her lease by having Alex come there?
Why do all the characters tolerate lying? It’s just constant throughout the whole book.
Why drink the LSD once she knew it was LSD? Surely pretending to have drunk it would have worked just as well, More-so when you consider she wouldn’t have been completely bent off her arse while somebody was trying to kill her?
Why, Other than the author being lazy and wanting to wrap shit up quickly, would Martha, or her parents have revealed any of their secrets to her? They’d all well and truly married that lie 20 years earlier. I don’t buy any of them coming clean.
Women who murder their children and suicide afterwards, don’t do it because they find out their husband has had an affair. This annoyed me because even the most basic of research into maternal filicide would tell you that. Why not write a more credible early trauma?
So I’m going to rate the book as 4 stars right up to chapter 37.
Chapters 37 through to 42 get 2 stars. Maybe 1 Star. Because it’s just characters explaining shit to each other.
43 onwards gets 3 stars because more stupid explaining of plot points, though less so than previous chapters, but never quite reverts back to the books earlier quality.