The Woman In Our House
The Woman In Our House - Andrew Hart 3/5 stars
I’ve often said that books like these are a bit like junk food and there’s nothing wrong with that. Junk food is what we all need from time to time and no matter what people say, we all love junk food. The more the better. A Woman In Our House is exactly what I love in a good thriller. It ticks off all the boxes that make a book like this a good, but predictable read and I swear the writers of these must have a checklist tacked up somewhere so they hit all the right spots. The important thing here is the characters. They are the glue that holds these books together, and the plot may be predictable, but it has to connect with the reader somehow. Without the connection, and the characters it’s not going to work. That connection makes or breaks the book and that is the key to a good thriller.
I’ve often said that books like these are a bit like junk food and there’s nothing wrong with that. Junk food is what we all need from time to time and no matter what people say, we all love junk food. The more the better. A Woman In Our House is exactly what I love in a good thriller. It ticks off all the boxes that make a book like this a good, but predictable read and I swear the writers of these must have a checklist tacked up somewhere so they hit all the right spots. The important thing here is the characters. They are the glue that holds these books together, and the plot may be predictable, but it has to connect with the reader somehow. Without the connection, and the characters it’s not going to work. That connection makes or breaks the book and that is the key to a good thriller.
Hart had written a book that follows the blueprints of other suspense thrillers which sounds bad because you know how it’s all going to turn out. What we have is a novel that taps into the fear all parents have and that’s leaving our children alone with someone you don’t know. Anna’s fears towards the last half of the book are of course warranted but there’s a bit of a twist, and a weird one, but this time I didn’t see it coming. Hart does a bit of misdirecting here which saves the book a little. Is it still predictable? Yep, it is, but the overall pace of it all and the characters are the driving force of the novel. We almost see what's coming, we know that in the end, things are going to end badly, but the getting there is what makes it all worthwhile
The story has been done before, and Hart knows this so he throws us a curveball. Is Oaklynn as bad as we think? For the answers, you have to read the novel. Yes, there’s a lot here you’ve seen before on the Lifetime network. Decent suspense thrillers love to make us fear something we usually trust and this one is no different. The genre is good because it’s predictable, and gosh darned it, the authors keep pulling us in because they know we love the stuff they churn out. We can’t help it and the genre thrives because it’s like junk food and we eat it knowing it’s not good for us. Despite all of its flaws, there’s a bit of a twist thrown in that make this worth reading. Is it a masterpiece? No, but it’s still something you could read on a warm summer day, or on a bitterly cold winter day when you feel like crashing on the sofa with some munchies and a decent book. It ticks off the right boxes that keep the suspense novel alive, and that's not a bad thing at all.
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