Rosie’s #Bookreview Team #RBRT #Thriller If She Dies by @ErikTherme

Today’s team review is from Sandra. She blogs here https://www.firthproof.co.uk/index.php/book-reviews

Sandra has been reading If She Dies by Erik Therme

If She Dies is the harrowing tale of a mother’s grief, and shows how couples can be affected very differently by the loss of a child; in fact, a lot of relationships don’t survive this kind of stress. Nine months after losing their daughter, Lily, in a tragic accident, Tess and her husband, Josh, are on very different pages when it comes to dealing with their loss. Tess is slightly unhinged, behaving in an obsessive way and lying to her husband about what she does all day. Josh has a different way of coping and seems, unreasonably, to expect Tess to move on and return to how she was before.

Erik Therme has managed to get inside Tess’s head and give the reader a convincing portrayal of her grief. The story is told solely from Tess’s point of view, and this first person narrative really ramps up the atmosphere of paranoia, and emphasises that she is hanging on to her sanity by a thread. Despite her strange behaviour, I had great empathy for Tess and her situation. This story was not always easy to read, but perfectly captured the sense that she was on the edge and could go either way.  

The pace is uneven with a very long stretch at the beginning to set the scene, and then the story did not go in the direction that I expected it to, which was not necessarily a bad thing. If She Dies does not really fit into the psychological thriller mould and is, in fact, quite difficult to categorise. I had not read anything by this author before so did not know what to expect, but will definitely look out for some of his earlier books.

It is well written with believable characters, some likeable some not. I know Josh was hurting too, but I found it hard to feel much sympathy for him. There was such a gulf between him and Tess I’m not sure they would ever be reconciled. In this respect, the ending was unsatisfactory; I would have liked some kind of epilogue to find out if their relationship survived.

Nine months ago, Tess’s five-year-old daughter was killed in a car accident. The driver, Brady Becker, was sentenced to two years in prison. It didn’t make Tess’s pain go away.

Brady also has a daughter: A twelve-year-old named Eve who walks to Chandler Middle School every day. Tess knows this because she’s been watching Eve for the last three weeks. It isn’t fair that Brady’s daughter gets to live, while Tess’s daughter does not.

When Eve goes missing, all eyes turn to Tess, who doesn’t have an alibi. But Tess isn’t guilty.

Or so she believes.

AmazonUK | AmazonUS