Reader, I Murdered Him

Fair warning, this review is a mess - mostly because my feelings towards this book are a mess and I have a headache and just want to be shut of this. This review is as polished as it is going to get, so deal with it.

So... This was really not the book for me. I did not know this was a ... retelling? The author calls it a sequel. It's... Look, I was listening to the audio book and wondering why Jane Eyre was being mentioned. I've never read Jane Eyre. I'm not someone who has to read every retelling ever - even if it is queer. (Which, I mean, even if I wasn't shipping them, really, that actually turned out to probably be the best thing about the book.) (...And Felicity. I think I'm a little in love with Felicity.)

I don't really want to pick at this book because the idea was something that I liked - young woman vigilante protecting women from the men that would hurt them - and this book was extremely personal to the author - and it kind of shows, I think - but I just didn't enjoy this book at all.

The writing is somewhat poetic and it's a very close first person perspective - so we are subjected to every dissociative event and/or shock that Adele goes through. Also - which I should have guessed from the title, but I thought it was just a stylistic choice - this story is being told to the reader. It's not just a very close first person perspective, Adele is actually the narrator and she is writing her story out. And there is just this constant pervading sense of doom and dread and this terrible feeling that everything is terrible and awful and nothing good will ever happen.

The story starts when Adele is very young. I don't remember the exact age - though I do believe it is mentioned. I think she's somewhere around 8-10. She grows up during the course of the book. If you know me, you know I am not fond of this. I also do not find Adele particularly likeable.

And, look, I... I found this book really creepy at times. Really, really creepy. There's this man that thinks Adele is his daughter - or sort of thinks? I mean even the narration doesn't seem 100% certain if Adele is his daughter or not. He ‘raises' her after her mother dies - or at least takes her in. (She kind of raises herself for all the help adults are. ... And that's the ones that aren't creepy molesters.) Whenever Adele is around this man, there's this constant vibe from him. He talks about how pretty she is - and bear in mind, she's not even a teen yet. It all comes to a head towards the end of the book when he tries to rape her.

(I just...urgh. I have so many different feelings abut how this book treats characters. Especially the character of Erik. (Look, I listened to the audiobook. I don't know if it's with a k or a c, but I realized in the final bit of the book that I was mentally thinking of it with a k, so that's what I'm going to write.) Also, I'm going to tag this under spoilers because there's a big reveal that I can't talk about this character without talking about the reveal and this reveal will likely change your perception of a lot of the book - I know it did me. Also I talk about the climax of the book. So... If you haven't read the book and want to, maybe don't read the spoiler?

Erik is Adele's 'cousin' (maybe cousin because is her 'father' really her father?). He's close to her age and lives in another country and they start a correspondence to help her with her English and so she has someone around her age to befriend. They write to each other for years. Tender feelings start to mutually happen. Adele develops a bit of a crush and Erik does as well. Erik and his letters help to get Adele through things and his affection for her increases.Her letters to him start to slack off while she's at school because she's making 'real' friends and doesn't need a penpal. Then Adele meets Nan, a female criminal, and ... well, in short, ghosts Erik. His letters get more affectionate and Adele, tangled up in her feelings for Nan, doesn't write him.This really ticked me off, honestly. Even if she doesn't feel romantic affection for him, he has been her friend for a long time and, well, it sucks when a 'friend' drops you because they have fallen in wuv. It's not cool and my frustration with Adele was high all through what was supposed to be her 'happy' scenes because of this.Then we come to the end, when Adele finally gets to confront her dying (though not fast enough) 'father'. Adele just found out that Erik asked her 'father' for her hand in marriage and is...determined that she must hurt him and turn him down because she is in love with Nan and only thought she was in love with him. Now that she knows what real, physical love is like, his letters don't hold a candle for her.So, dear old 'father' at this point is determined that he and Adele shall run away together and live as husband and wife because he loves her. Adele refuses, throwing in his face the fact that Erik wants to marry her and she's going to marry him. (Also thinking to herself that Erik would understand about Nan and that any person that would love her would understand about Nan and that he would let her return to England to be with Nan, of course.)...To which her father reveals that he was the one at the other end of the letter for all these years....I'm still not sure how to get my head around this.I liked Erik when I didn't know who he really was and was upset for the way Adele was treating him - because she didn't know either - and if he had been real, her behavior towards him was kind of not good. Definitely not the way you treat a friend who's been there for you.I can understand her behavior when her 'father' started acting so creepy, after all, she was grasping on any lifeline to keep her away from him, but she's still thinking about Nan and how she will return to her - being no better than the men that cheat on their wives.And then the reveal that her 'father' was 'Erik' all along threw the one good thing that Adele had that was hers into such a vile, creepy light that this book that I was already finding creepy and depressing got even worse.(And, I have got to add, that this creepy, inappropriateness is something that I am seeing in at least one other of this author's books. So I think that if she writes more (this 2022 release is her newest at the time of me writing this review which is August 2024) I'm going to have to read the reviews a bit closely even though she has been an auto read author for me since Mechanica.))

I was hoping for a strong, kick-butt young lady that was going to...well, enact the rape-revenge-fantasy trope, (though with an actual feminist take and not as trauma porn) if not for herself, then in benefit to others.

Instead I got a dreary, creepy, depressing book that, no, I did not like.

Was there anything good about it? you ask.

Well, the title. There was a section while she was at boarding school and making friends of a few chapters that was pretty okay. And the last two-ish chapters because things were finally not depressing - even if she still is rather morbidly obsessed with death. I liked the girls at her school, I like how they do their best to look out for each other. I like how there's no in fighting between them. (Even if that's what Adele thinks she sees at least once.) I also like the idea of the book. The book in my mind was something I actually enjoyed and felt empowered by. ... I rather wish I had left it in my mind.

But, beyond that, I'm glad I was listening to the audiobook otherwise I'd have honestly never finished it.