Review: The Night Before

The Night Before by Wendy Walker
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I sat here staring at the blinking cursor for far too long before beginning this review. I suppose this should be an indication of my lackluster feelings towards this book. It receives three stars, when in fact it's probably closer to a 2.5 (Goodreads - please - can someone on the software development team finally implement the half star ratings system so I can stop lying to myself and the two or three people who read my reviews?), only because of the decently clever back and forth narrative approach of Night Before / Morning After. Which can also double as a name for off brand emergency contraception.

My appreciation of the storytelling method does NOT apply to the therapy session chapters that were arbitrary and purposely out of chronological order. I cannot even pretend there was a purpose behind scattering these chapters in the manner they were as it added zero value, and may have actually taken us into negative values. I also cannot say whether or not I enjoyed a single one of these characters; they all seemed like people I would purposely avoid in real life because they are annoying, inconsistent, unrealistic and selfish (wait - did I just accidentally describe myself...? That's embarrassing..). This, of course, would occur during a time when I am NOT forced into utter isolation, as I would settle for any human interaction right about now.

To give some credit to this novel, there were a handful of sneaky plot points that I can respect, which is more than I can say for the majority of this genre. Let it be known, though, that this does not include finding out the killer and resident psychopath is the long time childhood friend who has been harboring obsessive / murderous love for our main character all along. I did not feel one quiver of excitement at this "reveal". And during this long, lonely quarantine, I need to feel titillation and stimulation more than ever...More. Than. Ever.

But, to be fair (clearly not to us as the reader), there were really only four characters in this whole novel, maybe five if I'm being generous, that we could reasonably assume would be outed as the culprit eventually. So in all actuality, we were set up for disappointment from the get go. What else is new.

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