Review of “You Don’t Want to Know” by Lisa Jackson

The title says it all.

I bought this book because the back cover suggested that this is a story about a woman who had a mental breakdown and finds herself doubting her own sanity after attempting suicide and hallucinating her missing son’s presence after two years. The author does a great job on the character arc. I had to keep reminding myself that the central character’s self-destructive behavior was due to her mental condition. That’s where my interest ended.

I don’t read mysteries in general because they are formulaic. The reader can’t help trying to figure who did what, which is a waste of time because the author can do anything they want to spice up the story and maintain interest. One of the comments read, “Multiple red herrings and a host of sinister characters help keep the pages turning.” I guess I don’t know what makes a good red herring because I was tabulating points for/against each character’s likelihood of being the bad guy, rather than jumping at every insult and personal snub.

I don’t think a 604-page book can be a page turner. More than 200 pages passed in boredom before anything happened, partly because the author kept repeating the biographies of the many characters. Things sped up after that, but I’d already lost interest. I truly didn’t want to know who did what to Ava Garrison.

The author used a technique I’ve used myself, which unfortunately paints the narrative into a corner. Many of the chapters begin in a scene and then summarize an event from the past, which requires use of the past perfect tense (e.g., she had gone to work). This is great until it isn’t. This book abuses it, often relating pages of past events and overusing the past perfect, sometimes with two phrases like the example above in one sentence. I don’t know if there are any rules about this, but I use readability as my guide; the author pushes this well past that point.

There were some well-written scenes with “nail-biter” tension. I guess that’s what Jackson is known for. Overall the book is okay, but way too long and repetitive. It’s too long to be a quick read and the subject isn’t worth 600 pages–maybe 350.

I think that authors/editors don’t read books from the reader’s perspective.