There were no secrets in Mapledon. No chances to mess up without someone knowing. No opportunities to play outside the rules.
I Dare You
by Sam Carrington
Genre: Mystery
About: Thirty years ago a young girl went missing. Her body was never found, but her killer was. Now he's been released from prison and the village where it happened is taken over once more by the tragedy that tore apart families and friendships. It never really went away, never had a chance to heal, because not everyone was telling the truth back then...
The Good
The narration switches from the present to the past in an interesting way. We're given the events in the past in a mostly backwards 'Memento' styled way which I enjoyed and thought gave good context to characters and events. I also enjoyed the classic discovery of old photographs to add spice to the clues and wished more of this had been worked into the story. We don't get enough detective work, and even these photographs are not utilised enough as we never get the flashback scenes to dramatize the reveals.
And I liked the dynamic between Anna and Jodie as kids, but since Anna grows up to be a teacher to kids of a similar age (and she also has a child of a similar age), it would have been interesting to see hints of that same dynamic playing out again in the next generation.
The Bad
It shouldn't have been a 400-page read. A lot of the scenes are repeats of a previous scene spent trying to coax information out of someone. The path to the truth is very passive and slow-going. Not a lot of tension either, considering a killer is on the loose. The reliance is heavily put on dialogue to explain character motivations and for plot reveals, which in turn makes every character non-threatening and strips them of any mystery.
Also the writing was not exactly bad, but it was full of so many cliché phrases. Everyone sounded the same because of this, and the two main POVs of Anna and Lizzie are complete mirrors of each other: both suspicious of each other, both with unreliable memory, both outsiders... I didn't feel like anything was gained by switching between them.
Probably not the writer's fault but I was able to predict all the big reveals early on (which is never fun when you have hundreds of pages left to read) though my biggest problem was in how that information was revealed to the characters. Fair enough this wasn't a detective novel, but there's a clear message put forward to not make accusations without evidence, and yet at the end there are more big accusations swung without evidence. There should have been at least some work put into finding clues, instead of interviewing everyone in the town over and over again. We never read the mysterious letters. We never watch the damning video. We never discover any physical evidence. The only scrap we get are two framed photographs - not even hidden away items.
The Somewhat Iffy
Anna's family situation didn't make a whole lot of sense. I could get on board that she hasn't been back to the village in decades, but her relationship with her parents read too strange considering how much time has passed. Her dad left the family soon after the tragedy and despite Anna being daddy's little girl, she's had no contact with him in thirty years. He moved to Scotland and she just never thought to look him up. Hated her mum ever since for him leaving the family and never looked for closure once. Not when she got married, not when she had a kid... just never bothered to find him. And it read so weird to me that in her POV she refers to her mum as Muriel. Like, why?
Also the epilogue makes the whole story seem pointless. After the truth is out absolutely nothing changes. Relationships don't move forward, everyone stays living as they were before, life continues exactly as if they truth had never been discovered.
And of course it's up to anyone to start a family when they want to, but I couldn't help rolling my eyes at the throwaway line at the end that one character (who was sexually assaulted as a child and repressed those memories so fully that they have yet to be explored) has decided to try for a family. A baby is not a happy ending, therapy is.
Overall
A mystery with potential to be a good'un but fell flat. The story is not bad and if you don't guess the big reveals, you might find those thrilling, but there's no real tension here. No-one actively finds out anything: every secret is told to us, slowly, eventually, pointlessly.
Comments