Now You See Her - Heidi Perks

[MoominMantra]

What a ridiculous book. The story is told from the point of view of two people and one of them hides information from the reader til near the end of the book.

Like The Girl On The Train, there are not many people who could actually be responsible for the disappearance of Alice so it's not hard to work out who dunnit.

And it is not well written is it???!!!

I have got to the bit where abusive, gaslighting husband ambushes at the cottage and I'm trying to find spoilers for the ending because I can't be bothered to read it!

I haven't read this book (and won't be, having read your description of it), but I think the 'unreliable narrator' device is being used too much now.

It's a lazy way of adding twists to a novel - oh, actually, everything in chapters 1 - 20 was a load of rubbish, what a surprise that the narrator was the murderer all long but had suppressed her memories, etc. etc.

Exactly @ScreamingValenta! Lazy is exactly what it is. It's no different from 'she woke up and it had all been a dream'

Unreliable narrator can work well if it's done skilfully such as in the case of Lolita. This was definitely not skilful.

Yes - it needs, like Lolita, to be a coherent and persuasive narrative, a distortion of the truth, rather than a complete fabrication. In so many novels now, it's deteriorated into a way of presenting 'she woke up and it had all been a dream' as a sophisticated literary device.

There's some utter tripe published these days! You're lucky if you can find a decent plot, sincere narrators, and straightforward satisfying narrative. Good writing seems to be a dying art!

It was fine as a 99p kindle book (or I think I may have had it from the library). Undemanding stuff really.
Was better than say the "abs they were twins" type twist or "they were dead all along" type thing.
I mean there is always some twist - a TWIST SO COMPLEX YOU NEVER SAW COMING" as the blurb often helpfully says.