No One Knows

I received this book from netgalley.com in exchange for an honest review

No One Knows is another book touted as the next Gone Girl, but most of us know better by now to expect that level of surprise. The plot is similar as the husband disappears without a trace and the wife is assumed guilty, but never fully charged due to insufficient evidence. What I am trying to say is, if you enter this book thinking of it as the new Gone Girl, you will be disappointed. (So don't! This book holds its' own.)

We being our story five years after the husband's disappearance, just as the state legally declares him dead. Unfortunately, it's hard to find closure knowing what happened or, at minimum, finding a physical body. As the wife stumbles into a new love (who has strong resemblance to her lost husband), the web of mystery becomes tangled with new information and missing pieces – not to mention the million dollar inheritance.

There is a lot I really like about this book. The simplicity of characters of this book was a huge relief. My last book had seven narrators in the first five chapters – I had a hell of a time figuring out what was going on. Here, there was no need for guessing who's mind you were in. Also, our two main characters didn't get along, which I absolutely love. The story wasn't “gossipy”, but the tension and insight into how a person feels about another and vice versa makes me happy. The rivalry and twisting of situations keeps it interesting.

I love that this book did not ignore the obvious.I won't go too far into detail here – I want you to read the book after all – but there is an instance in the story where the answer is obvious. Like ‘OMG, narrator, you are stupid, author, why did you do this obvious thing to me?!' status. But, you know what? The main character did not ignore the obvious and actually obsessed about it like a normal person (and the readers) does. I was impressed.

The one part that killed me: the endings. In fact, my four star rating is fully based on the first ending and pretending the story ends there. I am blissfully blacking out the epilogue.

Why? Well.. It's mostly a spoiler alert, but what I can tell you is that it tries reeeally hard to twist the story into something it can't possible be – something that is too unbelievable, even for me.

I don't want you to read this spoiler alert because I want you to read the book, but.. if you can't stand it.. here it is: The first ending plays perfectly into the story and what we know of the characters and the situation.The second ending – grrr – it tries to turn the entire story around saying that our MC was in on the scam the entire time. This COULD be a reasonable twist of events, but not with the way the story is written. This worked for Gone Girl because, while we were reading from the missing wife's diary, we were not in her head. If we were in her head, we would know what she was really up to and how she really thought. You can't tell me throughout this whole book that the MC forgot that she not only planned the scam and somehow convinced herself that she didn't, but also that the husband forgot her major role. Nu-uh, no way.The third ending (Epilogue Part 1*) looked promising, but the news story ended too soon to be satisfying. If this piece included the whole expose on the couple, I would have been content. But.. It didn't.The fourth ending (Epilogue Part 2*) was just frustrating. It set the book up for a second, but not really because there is nowhere else for the book to go. It creates another unsatisfying loose end.*I lied above by stating I was only blocking out the Epilogue. The second ending is a part of the story.]

Overall, I think this is a relatively forgivable flaw as I can blissfully pretend it never happened.

I picked this book up as some pulp to listen to while running. The first half set up a lot of intriguing clues and presumable red herrings, and I was hoping it'd be a fun kind of mystery/thriller in the vein of (if not as good as) Girl on the Train, etc. It seemed like it might be. But it ended up feeling closer to a cheap Lifetime movie than anything else: most of the secrets are unveiled or at least heavily telegraphed in the early second half, and... well, spoilers:

SpoilerThe final chapter before the epilogue, which reveals that the protagonist was in on it all along (...?), seems to imply that the entire thought process of the character, through the whole book, relayed in the third person, was ... a lie? If she was in on it, why was she so confused the night of his disappearance? Why was she shocked to find he was alive? Why didn't she seek him out? It's a pretty ham-handed effort at the “unreliable narrator,” a trick which can be mind-blowing when successful, but there's not even an attempt at an explanation here. I think there was something about medication? But the medication was not properly established up to that point, if so. Or even properly asserted at that point.

I don't know. Maybe I'm being too harsh. I liked the first half. I just felt like it unwrapped poorly, and Spoilerthe weird attempt at a final twist didn't come off well.