She Treads Softly: Someone We Know

Sunday, August 4, 2019

Someone We Know

Someone We Know by Shari Lapena
Penguin Random House: 7/30/19
eBook review copy; 304 pages
ISBN-13: 9780525557654

Someone We Know by Shari Lapena is a recommended domestic thriller.

In Hudson Valley city of Aylesford, N.Y., we know a killer is in the neighborhood. Lawyer Robert Pierce reports his wife, Amanda, missing, but the police and neighbors think she left him. At Paul and Olivia Sharpe's house, they discover that their teenage son, Raleigh, has been breaking into neighborhood houses and hacking into their computers, learning their secrets. Olivia makes Raleigh show her the two houses he broke into and she secretly sends them anonymous letters apologizing for her son's actions. This sets off one of the recipients to start going house to house to discuss this home invasion and wanting to know who the teen is. Suddenly the information pipeline goes rampant and starts spilling over with all manner of personal secrets and promiscuous affairs.

So, the plot does move along and suspects keep piling up as new information is uncovered. Lapena throws out all sorts of twists and turns to keep the reader guessing. The characters, however, are not particularly well developed and there really isn't anyone you want to support. You might want to shake a few people and tell them to snap out of it, but they are all caricatures and don't feel like real people. While suspense keeps the novel rolling along, mainly because everyone is sleeping around - or with Amanda - and everyone is a suspect, none of the characters are memorable or interesting. Olivia is just plain stupid. What functioning adult would ever think it would be a good idea to send out anonymous letters telling people their house was broken into? Once she did that my interest and engagement in the plot plummeted. Basically, I didn't really care what happened to any of these people and kept reading for the big twist and final reveal. This is a novel to read for the suspense rather than the clever writing.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Penguin Random House.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.