Book Review: The Girl Before by J.P. Delaney

Right off the bat, I have to say that while the mystery/thriller genre isn’t necessarily one of my top favorite genres, I thoroughly enjoyed J.P. Delaney’s The Girl Before. At the same time, I can’t necessarily say that I think that this is a truly great book, especially the more I think about this book after having finished reading it about three weeks ago.

Prior to reading The Girl Before, I was very drawn to the premise of the book centering around two women living in the same house at two different points in time. (Emma, along with her boyfriend, Simon, were the previous tenants; and Jane moves into the house at the start of the book) The whole idea of the characters being able to live in a house, that while the house is very luxurious, there are a lot of really weird rules that the people living the house are expected to follow was also very interesting to me. Plus, Edward Monkford (The man who designed the house and owns it) has a rather elaborate screening process that involves having to answer a lot of rather odd questions that are featured at the beginning of each chapter throughout the book. The fact that the mystery that the book is ultimately centered around is, “What exactly happened to Emma?” is something that I quickly became very invested in once I started reading The Girl Before.

The Girl Before is definitely a book that has a lot of twists and turns that I really enjoyed for the most part. One thing that I found myself thinking about a lot when I read and reviewed Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train and Liane Moriarty’s Truly Madly Guilty is that the main characters in both of those books definitely weren’t exactly the most likable people, but that’s especially the case when it comes to the characters in The Girl on the Train. Initially, I thought that both Emma and Jane were both fairly likable for the most part, and I thought that they were also both very sympathetic characters, especially given the fact that they had both suffered a tragedy of some kind prior to moving into the house on One Folgate Street. (Emma was the sexually assaulted during a home invasion, and Jane had a baby that was stillborn.) When I first started reading The Girl Before, I really liked that Emma and Jane initially seemed like very likable people, since I feel like the characters in the other mystery/thriller novels that I’ve read in the past have all had the tendency to ultimately not be the most sympathetic and likable characters. However, as the overall plot of The Girl Before progressed, it became more and more clear to me that perhaps Emma and Jane weren’t as likable and innocent as I had initially thought that they were.

Book Review: Dark Intelligence (Book #1 in the Transformation trilogy) by Neal Asher

While I usually like to start off my reviews on a positive note, especially when I’m reviewing a book that I liked, and for the record, I really loved Dark Intelligence for the most part; I feel like I need to begin this review by discussing what’s definitely the biggest complaint that I have about this book. The reason why I want to start off this review by discussing the biggest complaint that I have about Dark Intelligence is because I want to preface this review by saying that Dark Intelligence is the first book by Neal Asher that I’ve ever read. I feel like I need to be upfront about that right from the start of this review in case people who’re much more familiar with Asher’s books read this review, and feel like I don’t know what I’m talking about. If people read this review and feel that way, I definitely apologize for that. I always try my best to get the details regarding a book straight whenever I write a review for it. That being said, while I really loved this book and I was definitely blown away by the overall quality of Asher’s writing; the biggest problem that I think this book has is that it definitely lacks a sense of accessibility to people like me, who’ve never read any of Asher’s books before.

When I originally bought my copy of Dark Intelligence, which was well over a year ago, I was initially unaware of the fact that while it’s the first book in the Transformation trilogy, it’s also a part of the Polity universe that the majority of Asher’s books take place in; and that it builds upon events that take place in some of Asher’s earlier books. It was only after I had already started reading the book that I really started to realize how tied in and connected to Asher’s previous books Dark Intelligence truly is. I definitely found that rather frustrating and confusing since this is the first book by Neal Asher that I’ve ever read, and I had been really excited to read it ever since I first saw both Dark Intelligence, and the second book in the Transformation trilogy, War Factory, at Barnes & Noble.

While I think it’s great that Asher has created an elaborate universe for his books to take place in, I can definitely see some people viewing the fact that a lot of Neal Asher’s books are set in his Polity universe, and the fact that his books clearly build upon each other as a deterrent from deciding to check out his books. I think that would be a real shame, because Asher is definitely a very talented writer. That being said, I really feel like Asher could have done a better job of writing Dark Intelligence in such a way that makes it accessible to new readers who’re relatively, if not entirely, unfamiliar with his books; while also expanding the mythology of the Polity universe that he’s introduced and developed in his previous books for his long-time fans. 

Career of Evil: We're three books into the series, and Cormoran Strike is STILL down on his luck (Book #3 in the Cormoran Strike series by Robert Galbraith/J.K. Rowling)

I’d like to start off this review by saying that I’ve definitely been putting off reading and reviewing Career of Evil for quite a while, not because I didn’t like The Cuckoo’s Calling and The Silkworm, I loved both of those books. The reason I’ve been putting off reading Career of Evil is because I found Paula Hawkins’ book The Girl on the Train to be a rather challenging book to review. When I review something, I really like to talk about it in great detail, but since that book is a mystery novel, I was really unsure of how to approach writing a review for it, and it’s definitely the same thing with this book. Books in the mystery genre are definitely one kind of book that I don’t think a person should have a ton of details about the overall plot of the book and especially the end of the book ruined for them before they read it. I’m really going to try and find the right balance between discussing my thoughts on this book, while hopefully not giving too much away in case anybody who reads this review hasn’t read Career of Evil yet; that being said, here are my thoughts on Career of Evil.

When it comes to Career of Evil, my overall reading experience with the book was definitely very weird. The reason I say that is because I started out absolutely loving the book and thinking that it had potential to be the best book yet in the Cormoran Strike series, only to have my thoughts on the book to take a turn for the worse the further into the book that I got. I’ll start this review off on a positive note and say that I love that Robin was so personally affected by the case they were trying to solve in this book, which involved an unknown person sending Robin a woman’s leg in the mail, and Strike and Robin trying to figure out whose leg it was and who sent it.

Maybe this will sound weird to some people, but reading Career of Evil really made me think a lot about the TV show Desperate Housewives and how the season mysteries were the most interesting when at least one, if not all of the women, were involved with the mystery in some way. In my opinion, the show definitely suffered in season two due to the fact that the whole mystery with Betty Applewhite was so completely splintered off from the show’s core housewives for the most part, but I digress.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved The Cuckoo’s Calling and The Silkworm, and neither Strike and Robin were all that connected on a personal level to the cases in those books. However, having Robin be so connected to the case they were trying to solve in this book really contributed a lot to my enjoyment of the book. It also gave Robert Galbraith/J.K. Rowling the chance to really continue to develop Robin as a character even more in this book. Robin definitely has a very sad past when it comes to the fact that it was revealed that Robin was raped when she was in college, which subsequently led to her developing a case of agoraphobia and leaving college. That whole reveal definitely helped me to understand Robin as a character even more than I did before. I also found Strike’s reaction to this reveal and how it impacted their relationship throughout the book rather compelling, especially in terms of the drama that it caused between them.

It’s time to play a game of “People Watching: Extreme Edition” (My thoughts on The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins)

Right off the bat, I have to say that I loved this book. However, I have to admit that I’ve kind of been dreading writing this review since The Girl on the Train is a mystery novel. When it comes to books in the mystery genre, I think it’s really important for the reader to be surprised by the book and all of its twists and turns when they’re reading it. Personally, I was really surprised by some of the plot twists in The Girl on the Train, and I would hate rob people of the chance to also be surprised by this book.

When it comes to the people that I’ve encountered online who have said that they didn’t like The Girl on the Train, I’d say that the most common reason people give as to why they didn’t like this book is because none of the characters are entirely likable. I’d say that’s a perfectly valid reason for somebody to not like a book, TV show, or a movie. After reading the book, I have to say that I definitely agree with the assessment that none of characters in this book are truly likable, and I can see why that would cause people to not like this book.

Personally, a book, TV show or a movie having characters that aren’t necessarily very likable doesn’t always cause me to not enjoy it. I think a story featuring unlikable characters can still be very enjoyable, especially in the hands of good writers, and if the characters are intentionally being written as unlikable or bad people. For example, when it comes to my favorite TV shows, my favorite comedy is without question It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. All of the characters on that show are written as being rather horrible people, with Dennis quite possibly being a sociopath, and yet that’s a big part of the show’s appeal when it comes to people who like the show. A critic actually once described It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia as being, “Seinfeld on crack”. As someone who’s also a big fan of Seinfeld and was never bothered by the fact that Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer were all rather selfish and horrible people, I think that’s the perfect way to describe It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia in just one sentence, but I digress.

What can cause me to not like a TV show, movie, or this case a book, that has characters that aren’t very likable people, is when the characters aren’t written with the intention of being viewed by the reader as a bad or unlikable person. If they just end up coming across as being extremely unlikable due to bad writing, that can really ruin a TV show, movie, or a book for me. When I think about fictional characters coming across as being unlikable people due bad writing, the first examples that I always think of these days would be Ana Steele and Christian Grey from the Fifty Shades trilogy and Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey as Told by Christian by E.L. James. While I’m not 100% certain, I’m pretty sure that E.L. James didn’t write the Fifty Shades trilogy and Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey as Told by Christian with the intention of Ana and Christian being viewed by the reader as horrible and annoying people. That just happened because E.L. James is a terrible writer. To be fair, if you’ve read my review of Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey as Told by Christian, then it should be clear that I actually liked Ana in that book and the book itself.