Well, that’s a bit harsh … but I found Unspeakable Things by Jess Lourey difficult to follow and pretty boring.
Full disclosure: I love thrillers and horror novels. The more real they are, the more terrifying I find them. So I was anticipating the experience of reading this book because it’s “inspired by a terrifying true story” according to the back of the book. And I am not super discriminating about the thrillers I read, either–I have torn through so many Freida McFadden books in a matter of hours, fully aware of their formulaic plots and insipid characters. I was expecting a bit more out of UT than a Freida book, through.
My primary issue with UT is that Lourey writes from the perspective of Cassie, a preteen girl in 1980s Minnesota who lives with her parents and older sister. Usually when authors write from a child’s perspective, they use their skills to craft a coherent narrative. Even when they do not include adult perspectives on their childhood recollections, they sort out the conflict and confusion of watching adults and learning how to behave in the world to ensure that the reader can follow the story–understand the characters and know their motivations. Instead, this book seems like it was written by a 12 year old. Lourey does not tell her story clearly–there are characters dropped in with no introduction who then disappear for multiple chapters; she then mentions the characters again like the reader is supposed to remember who they are with no distinguishable features. And she uses the pronoun me as a subject way too much! Just because your narrator is a kid doesn’t mean you have to use incorrect grammar. If this is a conscious choice, it doesn’t even work for Cassie because her parents are better educated than most in their small town. They would never let her use me as a subject pronoun without correcting her.
Speaking of the characters, they are all terrible, especially the adults. Nary a redeeming characteristic among them, with the sole exception of the gay music teacher, who dresses nicely and is kind to Cassie and the other kids in the book. All of the other adults are either sex fiends or judgmental pricks or both–especially Cassie’s dad, who molests Cassie’s sister and conducts orgies, at which makes his daughters serve food and clean up afterward. WTF? And her mom is a classic enabler, allowing her husband to be an absolute monster.
The central horrific crime–young boys go missing and then return, their personalities altered–is barely featured. There are plenty of suspects–but the book gives us little investigation and no real discussion of these boys. Again, Lourey’s choice of perspective means that what is supposed to be the central plot point is frustratingly underdeveloped.
And the ending. The book just ends, and it took me reading Goodreads to figure out that the epilogue that Lourey wrote for UT is available only by going to her website and asking for a digital copy. I did just that out of idle curiosity–I subscribed to her website to gain access, read the epilogue, and promptly unsubscribed. Apparently Lourey wanted the ending to be left to the readers’ imaginations. I like unresolved endings if they are done right. However, like nearly everything else in this book, the abrupt ending just annoyed me.
