This book is not yet available in English, but you can find it in other
languages, including Italian, Spanish, German, Greek, Dutch, Russian and many
more, and of course in French.
I found this book beautiful until
approx. 80%. It was characterised by an intricate story, a succession of
twists, and continuous action.
But I noticed:
Alice was too much over the top; Gabriel obviously hid something and strangely
she did not realise it, or when she did, she was ready to believe his next explanation
without asking too much questions; it did not make sense that Alice would not
go to the police; in retrospect (knowing the ending) it was even absurd that
they decided to steal a mobile phone and a car, and that they got away with it;
the story of the date in the watch had made me realise right away that there
was something wrong with the timing.
More things I
didn’t like, because they gave the idea of being planned arbitrarily, were
the transition to flashbacks with the ‘I remember’ introduction and the habit
of breaking the scene at the end of a chapter and get it back in the following
one. The latter is really a mean trick to push the reader to continue reading
and creates dissatisfaction if what the reader wants to do is to stop their
reading (you cannot spend all day reading).
In spite of all, I
thought I was reading a crime thriller and I expected that in the end the
author would bring together the threads, making it at least plausible.
How wrong I was!
In the ending part,
the novel implodes.
My suspension of
unbelief slipped inexorably until it escaped me, even my judgment dropped from
5 to 3 stars in a few pages. The explanation that the author decides to give
about the events is totally improbable. I don’t want to go into detail to avoid
too many spoilers, but I can at least say that there isn’t any reason why the
male protagonist (Gabriel) should’ve come to do all that he did to get what he
wanted. He could do it in a lot easier way. It seems he made it precisely to
create a story invented for the benefit of readers. Only you should never come
to think of this about a character. If you do, it means that the reader no
longer has the illusion that somehow the story might really happen.
In other words, the
assumption on which the whole novel is based is not plausible.
Moreover, the
epilogue is terrible and this is why my judgment collapsed to 2 stars (it
didn’t drop to 1 because, if anything, the book is well written and seems well
translated in my language). During the ending I really thought the author had
gone mad.
[Warning: spoilers
ahead.]
The story ends with
the most incredible of romantic endings, without the slightest clue being given
in the rest of the book. It comes out of blue, without a reason, without you
noticing the slightest emotional connection between the protagonists in the
novel.
To make things even
worse there are those final lines, along with Gabriel’s long monologue placed
on a separate page, halfway through which I just scrolled to get to the end.
[End of spoilers.]
In short, if you
want to read a crime thriller, read something else.
One could attribute
a new genre to this book: fake thriller.
Central Park (French Edition) on Amazon.
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