She Lies Close by Sharon Doering


☆☆
ebook, 259 pages
Expected publication: November 10th 2020 by Titan Books
About the Book:
Five-year-old Ava Boone vanished without a trace six months ago. No witnesses, no sightings or arrests. But Grace Wright just moved in next door to the only suspect the case had: quiet, middle-aged Leland Ernest. Recently divorced, Grace uprooted her two small children to start again and hopes the move will reset her crippling insomnia. With whispered neighborhood gossip and increasingly sleepless nights, Grace develops a fierce obsession with Leland and the safety of her children. Could she really be living next door to a child-kidnapper? A murderer? With reality and dream blurring more each day, Grace desperately pursues the truth - following Ava's family, demanding answers from the police - and then a body is discovered.

This book drove me mad. The descriptions of what could go wrong...

My neighbor will be deemed harmless, but will still move away. I will not die of rabies. The children won’t feel abandoned or unloved or guilty because I divorced their father. I will win a small amount of money, which will allow me to dig myself out of debt.

Her internal monologues about what her kids are doing and the worry about the children...yet she leaves them alone to go running and she leaves them alone in an unfenced yard to answer the phone?
 
Chuck, I have a little girl outside. I don’t have a fence. My door is, I don’t know, twenty, thirty feet from his, nothing between our doors but grass and trees.

And the irritating way she describes motherhood and her kids! Over and over again...

Don’t consider what she’s like, that she’s a girl with an easy joy in her eyes, generous with her candy, mortified of bees, and will stand her ground when it comes to brussels sprouts and hairbrushes. That she has a bad habit of picking at the dry edges of scabs on her knees. That she dances and twirls even when there’s no music. That she loves cats and horses and anything you can sniff: markers, lip gloss, lotions. Don’t dare contemplate what she might have gone through. What she might still be going through.

Some of the writing was poetic but the style should have been used sparingly. Too much in my opinion. Thank goodness this was a short book. Others have enjoyed this a lot more than I did so judge for yourself.

Thank you NetGalley, Sharon Doering and Titan Books for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an impartial review; all opinions are my own.

#SheLiesClose #NetGalley

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