Thursday, January 3, 2019

Obsession: Amanda Robson

Obsession: Amanda Robson
Genre: Thriller (domestic)
Published: 2017
Pages: 454






Carly and Rob. Craig and Jenni. That's the way its been for a while. The two women met while pregnant and have been friends ever since.

Until one night while Carly is on vacation and drunkenly asks Rob who else he would choose to be with given a choice. She didn't expect him to say Jenni. Believing that the two are conspiring, paranoia soon takes over Carly's life as she tries to expose them. But as their lives begin to unravel, is Carly the one to blame? Who can any of them really trust? 


***Warning: there are some mild spoilers.***

This book essentially starts off as a bare-bones cheating scandal with not a lot of new things brought to the table. For a while, I thought that was what I was going to get. Of course, it ended up being a little different. 

First off, the title is a bit misleading. "Obsession" implies an intense longing for a relationship, and that's kind of what we get, but not quite. (There are plenty of sex scenes that I didn't love which I guess is where the "obsession" part comes from. Maybe it's just me, but some chapters were just plain erotica. That's not my thing at all.) It's true that the main characters spend time thinking about each other, but not to the degree that people may think. 

The first 120 pages are basically watching everyone cheat on each other and getting mad at each other for it, and there's not a whole lot more. There are some subplots introduced that want to add to the story, like Jenni's mother dying, but they are abandoned within the first 60 pages making me wonder why they are there in the first place. I also found the motivations to be a little confusing. Basically the premise is that one woman gets mad at her husband because she thinks he's cheating, but then she does the same thing with her friend's husband...and then, so does everyone else. So they all find it okay for themselves to cheat, but when their friend or spouse cheats on them it's time to fight to the death?  If the women are so much happier with each other's husbands, why don't they just swap husbands? Hey, that's a great idea! Why not have them both just get together with the other guy and live happily ever after? I guess that would have made for a shorter book. 

EDIT: I think this logic problem got caught in proofreading, because someone at one point quickly brushes it off as "because of their Christianity, they don't want to divorce." I don't buy it. If you were that Christian, you probably wouldn't cheat in the first place. It seemed like a very last-minute, hasty explanation. 

The main problem is just that nobody's a very good person here. Then, when lives are turned upside down, everyone is shocked because they "don't deserve it." Um, okay. Sure you don't. 

Character motivations come out of absolutely nowhere. Told in limited first person through alternating POVs, readers see events from the characters' perspectives. The catch? They might not be telling us everything. This technique sort of works, and sort of doesn't, since we have to make some assumptions for ourselves. I'm especially looking at the court case. We never find out whether the defendant is truly guilty or not because when we are reading from their perspective, they act innocent, but of course that may not be the case. Also, the person behind the initial evil acts shows absolutely no sign of actual evil throughout the book. I don't mean that it was a masterful twist; I mean that the actions they took completely went against their entire personality and thus didn't really make sense. 

The characters also seem to frequently go back and forth with their feelings for each other. When Jenni and Craig reconcile, for example, it seems like they flip back and forth between loyalty and wanting to cheat again. It's like a switch is toggled, and suddenly they're in love with someone else. The switch is toggled again, and they're back to loving their spouse. Rob and Carly do the same thing. One moment, Rob is wanting to protect Carly and seems genuinely in love with her. The next, he's thinking highly of another woman. That was confusing. Is he in love with her, or not?? I guess that's kind of the point, but it seemed like the characters had multiple personalities. 

That said, let's talk about Carly. Halfway through the book it's revealed that her paranoia is a result of some undisclosed mental illness, which is an interesting use of the unreliable narrator. (I'm also glad Robson utilized a different means of unreliability than drinking itself, which these books are apt to do.) Then the switch is toggled again...she's a completely different person...nicer, loving her kids again, loving her husband again. I'm not sure that's how those illnesses work. That also means that her guesses about the cheating behind the scenes are pure coincidence and I wonder if there was even reason for the first half of the book at all...

There are a couple other nitpicks I didn't love. Regarding language, everyone kind of sounds the same. It's kind of strange how Craig and Jenni sound alike, and Rob, and Carly. I didn't love how Carly's daughter Pippa had no personality other than acting like her brothers' mother. But this is REALLY nitpicky, so moving on. 

It seems like I'm complaining, but the last third was when this slow burn really picked up. I read the last quarter in one sitting, but I liked the suspense throughout the whole thing. There are court cases, jail time, and losses of life. Unfortunately, many of these intense scenes are kind of glossed over and I would have liked to see more of the reactions, dialogue, action, etc. (This is where "show, don't tell" could apply.) I also would have liked to see more of the evidence explained. Supposedly one character dressed up like one of the other characters as an alibi, but we never know why or how they accomplished that because they never tell us. I was also able to guess the final act of the book well before it actually happened. 

I do give the book props for making me wonder who was behind everything. It's not as "twisty" as some other related books I've read. It's more straightforward and true to the back summary, but I enjoy the suspense of turning pages knowing that exciting stuff is coming. And even though the characters weren't likable (and I don't think they were meant to be), the plot makes up for that by showing everyone getting their due and warning us how cheating can ruin lives. If you want a happy story, you probably shouldn't look here.

This is a decent first effort by Robson, though it definitely had its issues. A little more reasoning for the events that took place and for the character motivations would have been nice. Sometimes it seems like characters are doing things just to move the plot along. The intense scenes also needed to be slowed down and the long, dry first half could have been sped up. Still, it picks up eventually, and anyone looking for a standard thriller novel might start with it. It's just not unique enough to be one of my favorites. With practice, hopefully we can see more polish from her in the future.

3 stars




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