She Treads Softly: Never Coming Home

Thursday, May 12, 2022

Never Coming Home

Never Coming Home by Hannah Mary McKinnon
5/24/22; 368 pages
MIRA Books

Never Coming Home by Hannah Mary McKinnon is a highly recommended, entertaining psychological thriller.

Lucas Forester loves his mother-in-law and deeply cares for her as she battles cancer. He cares for Roger, a stray dog he adopted. He is also a con man who has been planning the hit on his wife for years. Lucas met his wealthy wife Michelle Ward at a London gallery opening. He quickly fell in love with her trust fund, the two married, and moved to the wealthy enclave of Chelmswood to be near her family.

Biding his time for years, Lucas plans the perfect demise for his wife so he can get his hands on her money. He takes out a hit on her, she disappears, presumed kidnapped for a ransom, and Lucas publicly grieves for her. It looks like he is going to get his hands on her money, until it appears that someone may know his secret plan and are now playing mind games with him.

Lucas is a funny, charming, witty, likeable scoundrel that you will adore and dislike at the same time. As the narrator of Never Coming Home you are privy to Lucas's every thought. You'll know everything he has done, know he is a devious liar, crook and murderer, but still find him a sympathetic character and even be conflicted about whether or not he should be held accountable for what he has done. This is an accomplishment - making a scoundrel so appealing and compelling that you support him.

The writing is wonderful and entertaining with a plot that will hold your attention right from the start and a pace that moves along quickly. The humorous, entertaining crook narrating the action is irresistible and despicable at the same time. The ending is predictable and not quite as enjoyable as the rest of the novel, but on the whole this is a wildly entertaining novel.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of MIRA Books.

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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.