Killing Me Softly – Nicci French
Hmmm. I wanted a light read which I could easily get finished before I headed back home to Australia for Christmas next week. There is nothing worse than being halfway through a book and then agonising over whether you take it (and risk finishing it halfway across the world, leaving you with nothing to read) or whether you wait for three weeks until your return so you can take a new book especially for the flight. I had started Killing Me Softly and it was on my unofficial ‘Finish What You Started’ challenge for 2009 (i.e. actually finish all of the books I started and then put down over 2008) so it seemed like the perfect candidate. But unfortunately, I know why I put it down.
The quotes on the cover go along the lines of ‘A real frightener’, ‘highly addictive’ and ‘a nail-biting tale of love…’ Did I bite my nails? Not really. Was I frightened? Irritated, but not frightened. And was it addictive? Perhaps, but that just heightened the disappointment for me.
The storyline in a nutshell: Alice, settled and content, meets Adam. They fall madly and passionately in love, but as time goes on she realises he has a dark side, becomes obsessive about finding out about it, all reaching a climax (which was a little predictable) and ending suddenly. Problem is, I found it incredibly difficult to suspend my disbelief. Firstly, Alice walks across a road and catches eyes with Adam and within hours they are in bed together.
Er…hello? Sorry, but who in their right mind would do that? OK, I guess it is supposed to be ‘passionate’ and ‘spontaneous’, but this was during her lunchbreak. I could tell there was something wrong about Adam from the instant she locked eyes with him. Maybe I am more cynical or worldly than Alice, but to not realise that he was trouble was just a little too naive. When it turns out he is a dark obsessive I was sitting there thinking ‘yeah? so tell me something I didn’t know’. The fact that Alice throws in everything she has for him seems pretty silly. She must have been a pretty insecure woman beforehand to think that what this guy was offering was worth giving her life up for.
The story is supposed to be one long descent into obsession and the border of madness, but I just found myself thinking ‘wake up, Alice.’ Adam, however, represented everything in a man I don’t like – and his hero status made it even worse. Perhaps there are women like Alice who found that compulsive and sexy. I just found him unpleasant. I am sad to say that I struggled to feel any empathy for Alice. I don’t wish bad on anyone, but I couldn’t help the feeling that with a little more thought and consideration for herself she would never have landed in the situation. She just wasn’t strong enough for me.
The reason I was disappointed at the end was that the crime just didn’t pull together for me. I never really understood why and how it all happened, and although Alice ‘figured it out’, all of the conclusions she came to seemed pretty tenuous (even though they turned out to be true). The final scenes of her in the police station were less scary than irritating, but I was kind of glad we had got there. I don’t think I could have taken much more of the somewhat drawn out descriptions of their sex life and his glowering and pretty nasty personality.
My overall impression of this book? It was churned out because the publisher demanded it, and not given the time and thought that it could have been. It is a commuter read, which apparently reduces the need for depth. I am sure the author is an excellent writer, but I do believe that sometimes writers sell out to the demands of the market and their publishers.
Rating: 3/10
Publisher: Penguin Books
ISBN: 978-0141034195
Year: 2008
Date Finished: 3 December 2008
Pages: 343
