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A review by bryonie
Woman on the Edge by Samantha M. Bailey
3.0
All of 2019, I only read 20 thrillers... It's not even 10 days into 2020 and I've already blown through three of them. Is this a premonition that 2020 will be the year of the thriller for me? Only time (and the library) will tell.
Woman on the Edge is following in the trend of domestic thrillers that have been on the market lately. Could this be a sign that the genre is trying to move away from books marketed more towards a male audience and towards more female readers, I don't know. But I do find that they all have one trait that is really starting to get on my nerves - the idea that in order to have a 'surprise' ending, ALL clues and hints of who actually is the bad guy is either completely left out or left so vague/hidden that you KNOW who did it simply because they are a major player in the story, and they are the only person in it that has no suspicion or shadow thrown on them. WHY is this a thing? It doesn't make for a satisfying ending, at least not for me. In fact, it makes me feel a little cheated, because I personally didn't need to work to figure out the mystery. It was literally handed to me on a silver platter, where the 'fooled you' was completely non-existent.
This book took it one step further than most, however, because of a few things. I'm going to spoiler tag them because they don't appear until the very end of the book, but I will say that by then I had pretty much figured things out because of the omissions as I have mentioned above.
It's not until the last couple chapters that we are told the little things that SHOULD have been peppered throughout the book to at least try to point a finger at the culprit. The subtle differences in screen names for the message board that all the women used for one. On this point, I cry foul in a major way, simply because said message board was NOT EVEN MENTIONED by any character, either in the present day narrative, or the scenes detailing Nicole's past. Why couldn't this have been a major part of the story? It was no secret that Morgan wanted a child. Why not play up Nicole's reasons for being on the site, OTHER than her plan to find a new home for her child and trying to find a suitable candidate?
Why have all the hints at who her husband was having an affair with be pointed at the assistant, instead of Tessa?
Why have Tessa lie to us time and again about not wanting children, and then the big reveal is, surprise, I really do? Why not have her undergoing IVF and it failing time and again? Why not have her deplete her life savings trying to do this? Why not have her be rejected time and again to adopt for whatever reason? There are SO many ways you can show that she covets Nicole and her child instead of lying to the reader about her motivations, and we can only take it at face value because she has done nothing either to prove her own words wrong. Hell, her reasoning could have been as simple as I've taken your husband, and now I want everything he has. (I guess an issue with this is the husband walked away and never looked back, never fought for custody, never turned Nicole in for being an unfit mother, etc).
As for characters go, I felt the way Nicole was portrayed was a little high handed and a lot over the top. Yes, post-partum is awful, but I just felt it was done to an extreme that was unnecessary. Lots of things could have taken the place of the complete paranoia. Especially when all her close friends KNEW she was suffering, and NONE of them did anything about it. If an intervention is ever necessary, this instance is a prime example of it. Heck, THIS could have been a great opportunity for the culprit to show their motivations.
All in all, it wasn't a bad book. I just think a lot of the motivations were too muddy for it to be pushed out of the meh zone and to be a good or even great one.
Woman on the Edge is following in the trend of domestic thrillers that have been on the market lately. Could this be a sign that the genre is trying to move away from books marketed more towards a male audience and towards more female readers, I don't know. But I do find that they all have one trait that is really starting to get on my nerves - the idea that in order to have a 'surprise' ending, ALL clues and hints of who actually is the bad guy is either completely left out or left so vague/hidden that you KNOW who did it simply because they are a major player in the story, and they are the only person in it that has no suspicion or shadow thrown on them. WHY is this a thing? It doesn't make for a satisfying ending, at least not for me. In fact, it makes me feel a little cheated, because I personally didn't need to work to figure out the mystery. It was literally handed to me on a silver platter, where the 'fooled you' was completely non-existent.
This book took it one step further than most, however, because of a few things. I'm going to spoiler tag them because they don't appear until the very end of the book, but I will say that by then I had pretty much figured things out because of the omissions as I have mentioned above.
Why have all the hints at who her husband was having an affair with be pointed at the assistant, instead of Tessa?
Why have Tessa lie to us time and again about not wanting children, and then the big reveal is, surprise, I really do? Why not have her undergoing IVF and it failing time and again? Why not have her deplete her life savings trying to do this? Why not have her be rejected time and again to adopt for whatever reason? There are SO many ways you can show that she covets Nicole and her child instead of lying to the reader about her motivations, and we can only take it at face value because she has done nothing either to prove her own words wrong. Hell, her reasoning could have been as simple as I've taken your husband, and now I want everything he has. (I guess an issue with this is the husband walked away and never looked back, never fought for custody, never turned Nicole in for being an unfit mother, etc).
As for characters go, I felt the way Nicole was portrayed was a little high handed and a lot over the top. Yes, post-partum is awful, but I just felt it was done to an extreme that was unnecessary. Lots of things could have taken the place of the complete paranoia. Especially when all her close friends KNEW she was suffering, and NONE of them did anything about it. If an intervention is ever necessary, this instance is a prime example of it. Heck, THIS could have been a great opportunity for the culprit to show their motivations.
All in all, it wasn't a bad book. I just think a lot of the motivations were too muddy for it to be pushed out of the meh zone and to be a good or even great one.