Review: I Let You Go

I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

MY REVIEW...
Here is a novel with such an intriguing premise that you can't help but keep turning the pages to the end. I was fascinated to the end.

However, I was also betrayed by the author. (What follows is sort of a spoiler.) About half way through the book you suddenly find out that the first person prose is not who you have been led to believe she is. Then a little further on, and you get a whole different perspective from another first person point of view. All the while the perspective is shifted back and forth between the first first person and two detectives trying to solve the hit and run murder of a five year old boy. Then the second first person is inserted in the mix... Confused? Well, now you now how I felt while reading this book.

One thing to keep in mind, the writing is superb, but jumping into so many different heads is not well done. There are no transitions or even warnings that you are about to jump from Bristol to some rural, coastal village of Wales. So that brings the five-star writing down to three-stars. Then you must know that the characters are so well developed that brings the three stars up to four stars.

Frankly, the story is a roller coaster, and you just have to hang on, keep reading, and maybe you'll figure it all out by the last page.

I hate being betrayed by the author. It isn't a murder mystery that you must figure out who killed the boy. The author makes it plain that the guilty party admits her guilt ... or is she really guilty? Maybe she has been so abused and twisted by the second first person that she lies. Or maybe she isn't lying. Well, you'll just have to read the thing to understand what I'm talking about. I don't think hiding who the first person moves the story along or even creates any more suspense. It comes off as just what it is, a plot ploy that is just a trick. I just hate that. However, the roller coaster ride was pretty good so it almost made up for the betrayal.

ABOUT THE BOOK
On a rainy afternoon, a mother's life is shattered as her son slips from her grip and runs into the street . . .

I Let You Go follows Jenna Gray as she moves to a ramshackle cottage on the remote Welsh coast, trying to escape the memory of the car accident that plays again and again in her mind and desperate to heal from the loss of her child and the rest of her painful past.

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