Let me level with you from the start…I initially requested an advanced copy of Disturbed because I really liked the cover. Of course, I did subsequently read the description and it only reaffirmed my decision. A lone survivor of a brutal college massacre? On Halloween night? The killer was never caught? The girl (naturally) is still suffering from paranoia? Five years later she receives a mysterious note bearing the same message left behind at the original crime scene? Sign me up. See, sometimes you can judge a book by its cover!
Since this book has not yet been released, I’ll do my best to refrain from spoiling it for anyone who’s just looking for enough broad strokes and insight to determine whether it’s 238 pages well-spent. (Mini) Spoiler Alert: It is. But that’s not to say it’s not without its faults—one huge one, in particular.
There are some books that take a while to formulate an opinion about, and some that just hook—or repel—you from page one. The book opens on the night of the murders, from the perspective of Detective Lang, who’s on the scene. I was hooked from the second sentence:
A slice of streetlight illuminated blood spatter on the cheap beige carpet and the motionless body of a teenage girl.A tad macabre? Sure. But I didn’t pick this book for a cheerful literary romp. Jaynes weaves her story fluidly and carefully, with an attention to detail that could come dangerously close to flimsy filler, but never does. Her use of imagery is poetic (“…a crooked scarlet trail led into a darkened hallway.”), but falls short of schmaltz. Even dialogue that could read as hackneyed (“How come happiness is so fleeting, yet sorrow is not?”) manages to illicit emotion.
This strong writing follows us throughout our victim’s (heroine’s?) misadventures. After scarcely avoiding death on that early November 1st, Chelsea is a veritable shut-in at 23. She still bears the vicious scars of her repeated stabbings. She holds a well-paying job that rarely requires her to leave home, where she lives with her furry friend Harry. Her only true connection to another person is her best friend Elizabeth, a slightly older nurse whom she met during her recovery period following the attack. Chelsea has recurring nightmares, conjures images of the murderous Ethan, suffers from inexplicable blackouts, and goes running in the final minutes of dawn with a knife wrapped in cheesecloth and hidden in her bra…so yea, she’s having the time of her life. Following the attacks, she suffered from a form of amnesia and remembers very little of her life before—a plot device that I initially scoffed at as cliché, before realizing that I don’t think I’ve ever actually read a book where the protagonist had amnesia, so I left that one out of the minus column.
It’s only when Chelsea has a chance encounter with Boyd, who narrowly escaped that murderous night himself when he fortuitously left the party early to go to work, that she rouses from her stupor and starts to experience life again. This metamorphosis is almost immediately overshadowed by the sudden appearance of a note on her windshield, saying only, “You made me.”…the exact same message that the killer left the night of the murders. This plot development necessitates the reappearance of Detective Lang, who was wounded on-duty just days after that fateful night. But this cold case has been gnawing at him for five years and he’s only too happy to pick up where he left off.
This is where I’ll leave the remainder of the plot to the author and share the Good and the Bad of Disturbed.
The Good:
-Jaynes employs the K.I.S.S. method
As previously mentioned, Jaynes knows how to turn a phrase and paint a picture in succinct, expressive, and realistic language.
-Realistic dialogue
This may seem like a small thing, but there’s a line in the book when Chelsea and Elizabeth are talking and in-dialogue they refer to “the T,” which is explained to be the local subway system through off-dialogue exposition. I’m so sick of authors creating stilted, unrealistic dialogue where they have a character explain things to the reader, the awkwardness never fails to take me out of the scene, so this was refreshing.
-The little things
Jaynes' attention to detail is pretty impressive and leaves little room for the reader to question their suspension of disbelief. Such as, “…used toilet paper and quickly cleaned the blood from around the vent and flushed the bloody paper down the toilet.”
-TBD...
I wasn’t sure how she would write a satisfying ending to this story with the amount of real estate she had left toward the end of the book. The solution? It ends in a fashion that begs for a sequel. Typically I’m too impatient to read books that I know will not have a definite conclusion, but I do look forward to this follow-up.
The Bad:
-...
There’s no easy way to say this…the bad in this book was the “twist.” I found it to be clichéd beyond belief and disappointing of a writer whose work I was enjoying. But that’s not the worst part of it. The worst part was I guessed the twist roughly 20 percent in and was rewarded by chapter after chapter of “misdirection” that actually did nothing but confirm my guess. I don’t want to brag, but I’m not one to see M. Night Shyamalan’s twists a mile away, far from it. So the fact that I guessed this one so early is not a ringing endorsement. That’s not to say you can’t still enjoy this story knowing the twist early on, but it did cheapen the experience for me quite a bit.
-Poor character work.
Every character in this book was much older than their age, and not in a “wise beyond their years” way. Chelsea and Boyd were supposed to be 23 years old, but you would swear they were 40 based on their dialogue, actions, and lifestyle. Boyd had already been married, given it the old college try, and gotten divorced. I know 23 year olds who still can’t do their own laundry. There’s mature for your age and there’s miswritten. I kept forgetting that Lang was actually only 43 because he was written as a grizzled 60+ retiree back “for one more case.” He looks at a woman in his life and muses, “God, at the age of forty, she was still a stunner.” The behavior of these characters was reminiscent of how I viewed adults when I was 10 and 23 was the height of maturity, while 43 was knocking on death’s door. It was increasingly distracting.
TL;DR:
If you’re looking for a well-written mystery that will keep you saying, “Just one more chapter” and won’t mind if you spoil the twist for yourself early on, I would definitely give Disturbed a stab…get it?
I received an ARC eBook from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Comments
Post a Comment