Heads You Lose by Lisa Lutz

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This book worked for me only because it’s fricken brilliant to have one novel written by two people – especially two ex-lovers who very clearly have differing opinions on how a storyline should play out. I didn’t even hate the little blurbs supposedly sent from one author to the other after reading the previous chapter (even though these were absolutely, 100% fabricated and not at all real excerpts of emails…. But I digress..). I was a sucker for the back and forth chapter / author swaps as it made for a swift and enticing read.

The general plotline started strong, how can you not love the immediate discovery of a dead body? But it got way too convoluted in the middle due to each author’s apparent determination to sabotage the other’s creative spirit. At first this was comical, but it can only work for so long because before you know it, you have a stupid large amount of pointless characters, fruitless scenarios and dead ends. This novel felt like an identity crisis stricken teenager trying to “find itself” majority of the time, jumping from intriguing who-dun-it mystery to Mafia laced true grit novella. It was during those futile plotline shifts that I found myself flipping forward to see how long before I got to the next chapter and Lisa Lutz would deconstruct these silly mobster storylines created by her ex. I am not sexist (who run the world? Girls!) but I definitely preferred the chapters written by the female half of this writing duo.

With all of that said, this is the only book I have read that has used this dual author tactic, so I still consider it a win. I’m sure this approach has been done better by others (probably?), but I don’t know about those books, and ignorance is bliss, ain’t it?



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