Only Ever Her by Marybeth Mayhew Whalen

LOOK at this cover. Doesn’t it look amazing?

Judged by the cover, this easily ranks as a 5 star read. Alas, not all books live up to their look. 

Only Ever Her tells the story of Annie Taft: a woman about to get married who learns her mother’s murderer is being let out of prison. Her testimony as a three-year-old put him in jail. Anxious to escape her notorious past as a murdered woman’s daughter, she nevertheless agrees to support his release on the grounds that her testimony was probably an unreliable one. 

Then, four days before her wedding, Annie disappears. 

Told from the switching viewpoint of five different people, Only Ever Her started off interestingly enough. By the end, though, I was heartily ready to be done with it. As a disclaimer, I must admit that I do not normally read thrillers and a good chunk of my critique really comes down to my reaction to the genre in general. 

There is just too much melodrama for the story to feel believable. Everyone hides a skeleton in their closet. No one is quite honest, either with themselves or with one another. Every relationship is heavy, tangled, and angsty. 

And then it all wraps up and I guess we’re supposed to…what? Be like, ‘Gee, glad that worked out the way it did’? ‘What a great moral lesson about how humans suck.’ 

It is someone’s cup of tea, just not mine.

Further, being a law student made this one hard to read. I kept inwardly flinching at time lines (the man put away for Annie’s mother’s murder got release within days of announcing an appeal, which would never happen) or the behavior of the police. (Are they trying to get all the evidence thrown out of court?!)

But if you do like contemporary suspense dramas, you will probably enjoy it. It was fast paced and easy to read. 

Whatcha Reading…? 9/20/2019 Book Update

If I cannot tackle a book in one evening, I will probably start another. Hence why I occasionally like putting together these “Whatcha Reading…?” posts. It helps me keep track of everything I’ve got going! Currently I’m reading 6 books: King Lear by William Shakespeare (technically a play but whatever), The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Wicked Fox by Kat Cho, Only Ever Her by Marybeth Mayhew Whalen, My Brother Michael by Mary Stewart, and A Curse So Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer. 

I was inspired to pick up King Lear after finishing Hamlet. For some reason, I marked it to-read in high school along with As You Like It (and only those two. No other play made the cut on Goodreads!) I’m enjoying it so far but not as much as Hamlet. 

The Cost of Discipleship, meanwhile, is one of those books I feel like I am eternally reading. I’ve been at it for almost 2.5 years now. It isn’t bad, quite the opposite. I find it so profound that if I read more than a chapter a day I feel like I am missing something. So I read a chapter one day, forget about it the next, and read another chapter a month later when I stumble upon my copy again. And then forget about it the next day. Slow and steady, I guess. 

Wicked Fox is, in theory, a Korean drama lovers dream. It involves Korean mythology and modern day Seoul. But I won’t lie, I’m finding it super disappointing so far. The author does a lot of telling but not a lot of showing. Characters are profoundly psychological in ways that feel at odd with their age. And by golly, I’m over a 100 pages in and nothing is happening. I am not sure I will make it through all 424 pages. 

On the flip side, I’m finding Only Ever Her surprisingly enjoyable. I heard about it on a blog I follow and picked it up on a whim. It is supposed to be a thriller but so far I haven’t found anything that scary. Just good character build-up. The first person present narrative style does get a little annoying but I’m hooked. 

I’ve fallen hard for Mary Stewart’s novels so there was no way I wasn’t going to like My Brother Michael. I’m not very far into it but I can already tell I am going to love it. Be warned: her books are going to overwhelm my end of the year 5 star reads blog post. 

Out of all the books I’m currently listing, however, A Curse So Dark And Lonely has taken me the most by surprise. It presents yet another Beauty and the Beast retelling and I’ve read enough of those to last me a lifetime. But so far, this one is really, really good. It hits the right note of familiar fairytale while simultaneously presenting enough ‘new’ to keep the reader hooked. I hope it can keep it up.