Cover 7

No One Knows

No One Knows

2016 • 510 pages

Ratings6

Average rating3.3

15
bnsfly
Ben SaufleySupporter

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.

June 21, 2016Report this review