A woman goes missing in a close-knit neighborhood in Shari Lapena’s Someone We Know. Her husband is clearly a psychopath, but then again, the woman has committed the grave sin of being an attractive flirt. Shortly into the novel, the woman is found in the trunk of her own car, kicking off a a pretty straightforward whodunnit. Told mostly from the perspective of a neighbor of the murdered woman, the plot adds a wrinkle right off the bat: the neighbor’s son has been breaking into houses to “practice hacking” into their computers. Could he have done it? Will he be falsely accused of the murder? Can his crimes be hidden, or should his mother WRITE ANONYMOUS APOLOGY LETTERS TO HIS BREAKING & ENTERING VICTIMS AND EXPECT 0 REPERCUSSIONS?
I’m posting this for bingo on the “Pandemic – Read Whatever You Want!” square because what I’ve been wanting to read during the 17 weeks I’ve been stuck at home are thrillers and mysteries – while I wait for my girl Karin Slaughter’s latest to be published and after I devour whatever Lisa Gardner has churned out, I turn to next big thing, the new release, the recommended beach read, the $4.99 special on Amazon – whatever’s necessary to get my fix. I find thrillers & mysteries distracting from the absolute dumpster fire we’re living in; I know they can be super problematic and ladies be dying in horrific ways for a cheap thrill and let’s not even get into all the things wrong with thrillers that are also police procedurals – but I give myself grace in this arena because they distract me from my anxiety for a few hours.
And this one fit the bill! I read it in one sitting; I’ve read one or two of Ms. Lapena’s other novels and I find them all to be FINE – not amazing, not necessary recommendable, but easy to digest and good enough to fill yet another evening at home. The murderer reveal at the end was satisfying enough – not super obvious, but it did make sense in the plot, i guess? Overall, I’d give it a C+ or a B- – not better than a new episode of Schitt’s Creek, but time better spent than on old Office reruns.
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