For those of you who think I enjoy every book (which I generally do) here is In A Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware. Selling well at Costco, it's catching the popularity wave of The Girl On The Train - mysteries revolving around female characters rather than the crime itself.
Nora is mystified when she is asked to join a hen party for Clare, an school friend she hasn't seen in over ten years, but decides to go. The others are Melanie the new mom, Nina the doctor, Tom the gay, and Flo the needy and fragile hostess. Though they are all congenial, no one wants to be there and with no cell reception, they constantly think of ways to go home. No luck for the reader, as we have to hear them complain about it all. The fun events include getting drunk and doing coke, shooting clay pigeons, and playing with ouija boards. The constant topic conversation: James, the groom - so much the focus they even play a game where he is the subject. Nora used to date him and still clings 10 years later. The story soon cuts between the weekend and the aftermath, where Nora wakes in hospital room recovering from a car crash. There is talk of a murder. What happened? No one is telling Nora, and we have a long wait as the action is extremely. slowly. revealed.
This was a terrible book, with bland flat characters in what could have been a good scenario. Why Nora was still hung up on James after ten years is revealed, but we have 200 pages of teasing and irritating chitchat with people you don't like. After it was uninspired, it became tedious as the second half was incredibly slow. A 'page turner' just to speed it up and get to the point.
GoodReads reviews range from extremely disappointed to one of the worst books I've read but I gave it a chance - I even finished it. The overriding word it left me with was 'insipid', the word of the day, meaning: lacking flavour, tasteless, bland, weak, wishy-washy, uninspired, flat, lack luster, dull, boring, ho-hum, tedious, run-of-the-mill, trite, tired, hackneyed, stale, lame, anemic, and lifeless.
As Merriam-Webster comments: "Lacking vigor or interest."many artists continued to churn out insipid, shallow works."
Irritating and groan worthy. Awful.
1987 / Paperback / 118 pages
Comments