Spoilers Ahead!
After finishing I Will Make You Pay, I was back on the lookout for another easy read, when I came across ‘I Am Watching You’ on my kindle. San told me not to bother reading it. Looking back now, I realise I should have listened to her and saved myself from trawling through this book. Turns out, hindsight really is the b word.
The whole concept of the book fell apart pretty quickly. Looking at it from a realistic point of view, Ella could not have done anything different when she became a witness to the events unfolding on the train. Let’s face it – calling up Anna and Sarah’s parents was out of the question simply because it was unfeasible. So really the only thing she could have done was physically intervene herself, and honestly what were the chances of that happening no matter how good her intentions were?
Ella herself presented as quite a typically boring character. Perhaps in an attempt to spice up her personality, Ella made some reckless choices, compromising her safety further. Which resulted in irritation and excessive eye rolling on my part with the occasional sigh thrown in for good measure.
And then there’s good old Matthew Hill – private investigator by name, utterly useless in role. Literally, Matthew did nothing to help with the investigation. Why he was even a character in this book is beyond me as he made no difference whatsoever (as harsh as that may sound).The other characters were just as bland and unexciting as Ella. For some strange reason, unbeknown to me, all the characters kept widening their eyes at every opportunity they got. This was a common theme in no time. (Would have also perhaps made an entertaining drinking game – take a shot overtime a character widens their eyes).
The chapters were formed from five different perspectives – Tim’s one was completely and utterly pointless. None of the voices particularly stood out; they all started to blend in with each other pretty quickly and more than once, I forgot whose perspective I was reading from, forcing me to go back and read the chapter heading. But I soon got to a point where I didn’t care anymore and just wanted to finish the book to find out the ending. Each chapter was rather short and was left on a mini cliffhanger. A method that was frustratingly overdone.
In all fairness, there was that element of mystery at the beginning as to what Henry and Sarah were each hiding, which kept me reading as well as wanting to know what had actually happened to Anna. However, all that suspense, that agonising build up was so not worth it in the end. Plus to make things even worse, there appeared to be an over dumping of irrelevant and unnecessary information that dragged the book down deeper into the pit of disappointment and the wonderment of why I had ever picked this book up in the first place. (To be honest, I still muse about this).
The ending was as a disappointing as the rest of the story, so at least there was consistency in all fairness. The motive for Tim killing Anna was never properly explored nor explained; it felt as if it was completely random. Again, as with ‘I Will Make You Pay’, the killer was discovered by pure chance rather than any detective or police work.
All in all, a rather disappointing book in all aspects, making it perhaps the most consistent book I’ve read in quite some time. Would wholeheartedly recommend to someone who has had the misfortune to annoy me. I think that sums it up quite well.
Laters,
Saz
Bookish ruminations 