I’ve been reading a lot of very impressive debut novels recently and Girl in the Rearview Mirror by Kelsey Rae Dimberg is yet another. It’s a book about secrets – that much is made clear from the outset. But it’s the holder/s of those secrets that comes as a surprise.
I’m embarrassed to admit I didn’t get the title reference until I was writing this review. It should be obvious, I mean the book opens with our delightful narrator Allegra explaining that her superpower is splitting in two… offering one half of herself to each of her beloved grandmothers, before mentioning her father’s presence, but in my defence I read the book when my brain was weary, so….
Having said that, I did initially take it into the bathtub for a ‘short’ read before organising my dinner and so forth, but was still there until I closed the last page nearly three hours later.
I have to admit to being kinda vexed by this book. I’d normally shy away from a book set in the mid 1800s… not being a fan of historical fiction ‘n’ all. But something about the book must have appealed for me to have requested it and the blurb does set the scene for a creepy but intriguing tale.
I’ve made no secret of my love for Amos Decker, a character created by David Baldacci four years ago via the first novel in the series, Memory Man. It was the perfect opener because that’s exactly who and what Decker is thanks to a football injury he sustained when younger.
It left him with hyperthymesia – the inability to forget anything, as well as seeing ‘colours’ around people. The first book opened 16mths after his wife and daughter had been murdered, when former cop Decker had hit rock bottom.
Vengeance, ahem, justice awakened him however and he’s been working with the FBI since, as part of a small task force – though generally given a bit of a free rein.
Fiona Cummins has written two previous novels, though I’ve only read the first in that series, Rattle. Her third book and new release is a standalone novel. And it’s an addictively intriguing one.
I shared a picture of this book on social media when it arrived a few months ago and, at the time, a couple of overseas book blogging colleagues commented on how much they enjoyed it.
I’d not heard of Courtney Summers before though know (now) she has a few books to her name, but after being drawn into this addictive novel I’ll be searching out more of her work.
I wasn’t sure about this book as it’s a bit outside of my usual reading genre. I don’t read a lot of women’s fiction and stay far far away from historical fiction.
I do however, often read books that alternate between the past and present (a la Natasha Lester, Kate Morton etc), which this book does and I was thankfully engaged in this story and drawn to the characters from the get-go.
Fans of Big Little Lies will adore this book. I actually didn’t really ‘love’ Big Little Lies but I still really liked this book. It’s got the whole mother vs mother thing going on, but this time it pits friend against friend, or rather long-term friendships vs motherhood. Kinda.