Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is an interesting book because it might not hook you right away, but take my advice and push past that until you're addicted. Because I'm willing to bet you will be. This book = literary heroin.

I'll start by saying I knew there was going to be a supernatural element to this novel. That seems to be the biggest complaint about this book - people crying into their cereal over the fact that this isn't a true psychological thriller. Boohoo. I'm grateful it wasn't and I think that's what inspired me to a. read this book in the first place and b. force myself to keep trucking through the mundane opening chapters. I was looking forward to the creepy shit kicking in! That said, don't expect to be scared. Unless you consider lucid dreaming and obsessive, controlling relationships scary (I guess the later can be...).

What I think I enjoyed most was the fact that I didn't know where this storyline line was going prior to the last few chapters - which I RARELY say. The author did a nice job with "good cop, bad cop" personas - I flip flopped a few times trying to pin down who the real enemy was in this book. I was definitely racing to figure out what the actual F was going on. And believe me, it takes a little while to get there. It was irritating as hell that the author dropped teeny, tiny breadcrumbs of revealing information throughout the book and then immediately changed the subject. Or the chapter. It's similar to the frustration felt when someone says "I have to tell you something! Oh...ya know what, on second thought, never mind!" Just come out and say it and stop with the teasing - oh my god now I want to know even more than I originally did - damn you! Yea. Like that. And I loved it.

Sure, there were some plot holes and and yes, the author demanded you suspend your sense of belief at times, and okay maybe the "biggest twist of 2017!" reminded me a little too much of The Skeleton Key (totally awesome and completely underrated movie IMO, but I digress), but I refuse to act like I didn't devour this novel and ultimately really like it. I'm a sucker for anything lucid dreaming and I've dabbled in books that have dabbled in astral projection, so I was perfectly fine with this concept and with this being a left of center ending. I'll take a supernatural -voodoo -hippie plotline any day of the week if it means I can avoid the same old same old rut that the psychological thriller genre has "I've fallen and I can't get up" into lately.



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