I was a bit nervous for this one! We’ve got a middle-aged white guy writing from the POV of a protagonist with a pretty specific disability (SMA, a degenerative disease*) that he doesn’t share, and I wasn’t familiar with Leitch as a writer, but this was the only BOTM the month it came out that interested me, so I took a chance, and I’m glad I did! I thought the whole thing was very sensitively done, and I thought Daniel ended up being a great character. SMA is something that he lives with, but he as a person is not his disease, and he has an extremely rich inner life, and a pretty rich outer one as well. He has a great caregiver, a loving mother, a job that he can do from home that supports him well, and a great best friend. He also loves the place he lives, and he has a measure of independence that makes him feel satisfied with his life.
*The author’s notes share that the author is familiar with SMA because his son’s best friend has the disease.
Daniel is pretty much homebound, although he can leave the house with assistance, and he has a very specific routine. He begins seeing a girl outside his house at the same time every morning who appears to be walking to class (he lives in a college town), and one day he sees her get into a car with a man. The next day the girl has made the news as having disappeared, and Daniel suddenly has to decide what to do about the knowledge he has.
This book is sort of a hybrid creation: part character study, part mystery/thriller, part general fiction. Daniel sort of falls backwards into investigating the crime, and accidentally becomes involved in a way he didn’t expect. The book takes care to navigate how his SMA and life in a wheelchair complicates suddenly being involved in the plot of a thriller, but we also see pretty clearly a slice of Daniel’s life, and how his SMA does and doesn’t affect his everyday existence. My favorite part was probably the relationships that Daniel has with Travis, his stoner best friend who he’s known since he was a baby, and his caregiver, Marjani. He loves both of them, and they both love him, even though the dynamics are different as one is a friend and one is an employee. Daniel is realistic about his medical condition and what it means for his future, but the book never descends into maudlin territory.
I do really recommend this one.
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