Day 34: Book Review - Trust Me by Hank Phillippi Ryan

Between You, Me and the Lamp Post

Day 34: Book Review - Trust Me by Hank Phillippi Ryan

I finished ‘Trust Me’ by Hank Phillippi Ryan and what a letdown. The synopsis sounded interesting:

'An accused killer insists she’s innocent of a heinous murder. A grieving journalist surfaces from the wreckage of her shattered life. Their unlikely alliance leads to a dangerous cat and mouse game that will leave you breathless.'

Breathless? It didn’t leave me breathless at all. In fact, I skimmed over quite a few pages to get to the end. When I got to the end, I thought ... that’s it, that’s all?

Right from the beginning, it bothered me that the main character displayed such hatred toward the woman who supposedly murdered her child. If she uttered her feeling once, twice or even three times, I could understand, but she keeps harping on about the same over and over and over again. It got on my nerves.

Meanwhile, she herself is guilty of murder. She caused an accident, killing her husband and daughter. It was ruled an accident, but still, she is guilty of taking two lives.

The story starts a year after the accident, but rather than moving on, she keeps talking to her dead husband and daughter. This bothered me too. They’re dead, they’re gone, get over it.

You might think such a statement heartless, but it so happened that many years ago I knew a woman who lost her son in a tragic accident.

Margot and her three girlfriends came back from a week-long holiday. As they arrived in their home town, they noticed a headline in the newspaper that four boys had been burned to death in a car. They were horrified.

But things got worse when Margot came home, she found out that those boys weren’t just any boys, one of them was her son.

A week after the funeral Margot was back at work. She couldn’t afford to grieve for a year, she stated that she came back to work to be among people and to keep busy. She obviously suffered and she was never the same again, but she tried, she didn’t dwell on the loss.

Another thing that bothered me in ‘Trust Me’ was the drinking habits of the two women. My goodness, they didn’t just drink, they gulped it down by the bottle. Whether it was morning, afternoon, evening or night, they constantly had a glass of wine in their hand.

As for eating, there was very little mention of that, short of ordering pizza (accompanied by a bottle or two of wine). I wonder if the Hank Phillippi Ryan gave any thought to the many recovering alcoholics reading her book.

And she’s not the only one. I have read countless other books where I couldn’t turn a page or the characters were drinking. With some it was wine, others beer, or in same cases gin and tonic. In one particular book, I actually counted these drinking habits of the main character and came to 37 bottles in 7 days.

In conclusion ... I give ‘Trust Me’ a big thumbs down. The synopsis is well written, but the book is a big disappointment.