Looking back on the June book club selection-Before She Knew Him

Before She Knew Him was released 03/05/19 by William Morrow. Written by Peter Swanson, this was a recent BOTM selection. This was only the third BOTM I've read (behind Queenie and Daisy Jones and the Six).

Hen and her husband Lloyd move into the suburbs outside of Boston, and they think they've finally found a quiet place to grow old. When Hen spots a sports trophy in the house of her next door neighbors after dinner one night, that sense of security quickly disappears. The statue looked exactly like one who went missing from a young man's room years ago...a young man who had been murdered. Hen then begins to stalk her neighbor as she battles her intuition against her history of psychotic breaks that keep her husband and the police from believing her. One night they make eye contact in a parking lot, and Hen realizes Matthew has been aware that she has been following him all along. Can she escape the dangerous force that is her neighbor?

I was really interested in this book. A potential serial killer? COUNT ME IN. It fell a little flat for me though. One of my biggest pet peeves in a book is when a character isn't believed or is dismissed because of a mental illness issue or behavior. As someone with an autoimmune disease that happens to list depression as one of it's many beautiful side effects, it annoys me. It read a lot like, "we're not going to believe you because you're a crazy woman."

The ending was twisty enough. The book was decent, but that factor really took me out of the book. I don't regret reading the book, but I wished Hen had been written in a slightly different way...like the police not believing her because Matthew was a mastermind and a genius, rather than her mental state.

Quick read. Enjoyable enough.

🌟🌟🌟/5 Stars

Comments

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