30 Books in 30 Days, Vol. 2
Book 22/30
This was really good, but I was able to connect the dots easier than I think the author wanted me to. If twists were all this book had going for it, I wouldn’t have liked it, but other elements were just as important if not more. In fact, I’d rather have a thriller/mystery with substance than twists that surprised me, although it’s fun when you can have both (I have one of those waiting to be reviewed, and it’s a real banger).
This was my first book by Megan Goldin, and since reading it I have obtained both an audio ARC of her next book Stay Awake, and a used copy of her previous book to this one, The Escape Room. That might speak better than my review is about to about how much I enjoyed reading the book.
Our main character is Rachel, the host of a highly successful true crime podcast that was actually responsible for the clearing the name of an innocent man, putting Rachel in a rather infamous position. She’s working on the next season of the podcast, and this time around, she’s chosen a rape trial. The book alternates between transcripts of her podcast, POVs of her in the present day talking to the players in the trial and getting involved in the doings of this small northeastern town, and flashbacks in the form of letters and emails to Rachel, telling about the disappearance of Jenny Stills twenty years before. Of course you know that all three of these things are somehow connected.
The thing that I liked most about this book was the depth it went into regarding the rape case, and the gender politics and sexism that surround cases like it, all while maintaining respect for the victim, and she did so without sacrificing an exciting ending. I really liked what we saw of the podcast episodes, but as nearly always with fake podcasts in books, the episodes we’re giving are not nearly long enough to play like real podcast episodes. I wish the book would have marked them as excerpts from full episodes, rather than full episodes themselves, and that little suspension of disbelief I had to engage in would have disappeared.