Guest post! Review: Between You and Me by Lisa Hall

Hello, good morning everyone! Today I’m bringing you my first ever buddy read! This was a book me and Janel @ Keeper of Pages read together.

We’ve both reviewed the book, but on each others blogs, so below is Janel’s review! You can find my review over on her blog, here. We both had pretty similar opinions on the book, which was quite comforting for me – sometimes I feel like I can be so picky lol.

I’ve had loads of fun doing this buddy read, if anyone else wants to do one, I’d be more than happy!

Synopsis:

They say every marriage has its secrets.
But no one sees what happens behind closed doors.
And sometimes those doors should never be opened …

Sal and Charlie are married. They love each other. But they aren’t happy. Sal cannot leave, no matter what Charlie does – no matter how much it hurts.

Janel’s review:

“It happened so quickly, and now there is so much blood.”

What a fantastic opening line! And that’s the most praise I’m likely to give this book. I’m going to be vague in my review as this one of those books that is hard to review without spoilers so bare with me as I explain why Between You and Me didn’t live up to the hype – spoiler free.

Firstly, the repetition – in one chapter the events would be given from Sal’s perspective, then in the next chapter the exact same events would be given from Charlie’s perspective. This didn’t bother me too much at first because I was intrigued to see where the story was going and the chapters weren’t too long, but as the book continued, it really started to grate on me. Now you would expect if two people were to have an argument with each other, you would get a different accounts from each person as they re-tell it, making it worthwhile to hear from each person but here, the accounts were too similar at times and this led to me skim reading certain paragraphs to get to some new information.

Secondly, the repetition – nope, that wasn’t a typo, up until the plot twist this book felt like it was stuck on a loop. It went something like this: Sal’s version of the domestic abuse, Charlie’s version of the same domestic abuse, Sal’s version of the domestic abuse, Charlie’s version of the same domestic abuse, Sal’s version of the domestic abuse, Charlie’s version of the same domestic abuse…. I think you get my point. There’s only so many times you can read about domestic abuse before you begin to wonder if there is any more to the plot. Thankfully, there was a mini, and I do mean mini, subplot regarding a case Charlie, who is a lawyer, was working on; this added a little variety to the plot and I was so interested in it just because it gave me something different, and as it happened to Charlie at work, Sal couldn’t repeat it.

I believe this book’s success lies in the shock factor of the twist. It appeared everything in this book was geared toward this, but in the build up to it, the book lost its substance and thus left me extremely underwhelmed with the twist.

The simple writing style and the short chapters make this a quick read and I’d recommend buddy reading it with a friend, as that made it a more enjoyable read for me as I had someone to talk about the [failings of the] plot with, without fear of spoilers.

Not every book can be for everyone and this one just wasn’t for me.