This story follows novelist Gerry Andersen after an accident leaves him bedridden for a few months. He's completely dependent on his assistant, his night nurse, and the medications he takes. His mother died recently and he moved from NYC back to his hometown of Baltimore. He has all the time in the world to think and reflect on his 70+ years of life. However, being at home isn't as peaceful as it seems. His ex-girlfriend persistently shows up to try and get money or a place to stay out of Gerry and he starts receiving troubling phone calls claiming to be the main character from his popular novel - Dream Girl. Between flashbacks to his past, these confusing phone calls, and learning more about his assistant and nurse, we get a good picture of who Gerry is but the truth isn't always so clear. TW/CW: sexual assault
This was a big miss for me - there are tons of 5-star reviews on Goodreads where people found Gerry and his story compelling and thrilling and they were unable to put this book down. I found it to be completely the opposite. This read to me like a literary fiction book that decided at the end to go back through and put in some thriller elements. Lit Fic is not my genre and while I have found some thriller/mysteries that have a lit-fic writing style that I really enjoyed, this is not one of them. I was hoping this would be Misery mixed with Rear Window but that isn't what I got. I think the book was fine, but it mostly just wasn't for me. If mostly lit-fic with a side of thriller is your jam, then I think this is a good book to try out.
I think the part of the story this book did the best with is Gerry's characterization. Which, when the whole story is one guy stuck in a bed, characterization is pretty key. We get a lot of his life through flashbacks that jump through time. We get him as a boy, in college, through his 3 marriages, and when he's a professor. This is a very well developed and deep look at Gerry and from that perspective, it was incredibly well done. At time, especially in the first half, this felt more like a character study than anything else. I was trying to pay attention because I was hoping these random stories about these various things that happened through his life would come back and be important to the mystery aspect (and they were). Gerry is also a somewhat unlikable character which I actually really appreciated. I personally like when protagonists are unlikable because I find them more compelling and realistic. In this case, Gerry was unlikable in the exact way as to grate on my nerves so much when I was reading. He came off as arrogant, entitled, dismissive, and just generally sort of a jerk. Readers who want the main characters to be likeable need not read this book. The other side characters felt really underdeveloped and almost caricatures at times which fits with how I think Gerry would view them. I would get so incredibly frustrated with Gerry that I had to remind myself he was just a fictional character - which is probably the highest praise I could give to this type of book.
I think if this was marketed as a sort of lit-fic story about a man looking back over his life and maybe having to rectify a few situations, then I would say this was a success. However, this was partly marketed as a mystery/thriller and on that side, I'd say the book was a pretty big miss for me. The thriller elements, in theory, would be really interesting and engaging. A bed-bound man getting mysterious and somewhat threatening phone calls from a mystery woman. What will happen when she arrives? Is Gerry in danger? What does this woman want from him? The tension is practically built into the very concept of getting mysterious phone calls. But for me, the pacing and choices made with the thriller beats made it pretty dead in the water. It felt like the first half of the story was just the flashbacks to Gerry's life and then the thriller/mystery of these phone calls really came in way too late in the story for me and then was resolved really quickly. I wanted the thrills to escalate, the danger to grow, maybe some mysterious physical threats as well. It felt like we got like 3 phone calls that were all really similar, something big happened, and then we found out the truth all in a pretty small section of the book. I'll be honest, I almost put the book down at 80% when we found out the truth of what is going on because it had absolutely no pay off for me. Like, a character just explains what has been happening. In my mystery/thrillers, I want the protagonist to figure stuff out, to put the pieces together, to 'win' at least at some points. I didn't get any of those points from the thriller/mystery elements of this story and it really just took the wind out of my sails entirely.
I thought the flashbacks were interesting and did a good job building momentum as the book progressed. I acknowledge the difficulty building pacing, momentum, and tension when the protagonist is just laying in a bed recuperating. I liked that we were hopping around and following multiple points in Gerry's life which helped me feel more engaged in the story. If this was just a linear history of Gerry's life, I probably would have put the book down. I did find myself more interested in certain other plot lines more so the main timeline of Gerry and the phone calls so that was interesting. I also liked that a good amount (but not all) of these past plot lines intersect with the current plot line/mystery line so there was some payoff there. That being said, I feel like if the pacing was a little tighter and if some of the less important past timeline scenes got cut, the payoff of how these lines came together in the end would have been much greater.
Overall, my thoughts on this book fell into the category of 'not for me'. I can see how some other readers could find this story super compelling and interesting but it just wasn't clicking for me.
Thanks NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for review
Expected publication is July 1, 2021.
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