Ivy Reviews: Behind Her Eyes

Rating: 3 stars

“Everyone should be allowed their secrets. You can never know everything about a person. You’d go mad trying to.”

Summary of Behind Her Eyes

Louise is a single mom, a secretary, stuck in a modern-day rut. On a rare night out, she meets a man in a bar and sparks fly. Though he leaves after they kiss, she’s thrilled she finally connected with someone. David. When she arrives to work the next day, she meets her new boss, the man from the bar. Entangled in a messy affair, Louise bumps into Adele, David’s beautiful wife in need of a friend. But something is off. David and Adele look like the picture-perfect husband and wife, but then why is David so controlling, and why is Adele so scared of him?

My Thoughts?

“Behind Her Eyes” is one of those books that people rave about and when you read it, you’re left wondering what the fuck is going on? Seriously, the last 50 pages of this book are such a mind fuck that it borders on incredulity, you have to suspend all belief to make it work – and it just falls short. This book was rated the #1 mystery-thriller of 2017, so I went ahead and bought the paperback of “Behind Her Eyes” after seeing a promotional flyer that it was being made into a Netflix miniseries. In short, I went into this book with really high expectations. It’s not every day a novel is so well regarded it gets made into a series and I love seeing adaptations of books. Nonetheless, I will give Pinborough props for creating a page turning tense thriller that kept me up for almost 12 hours trying to solve.

My first issue is how this book is set-up. Pinborough took the “multiple POV” chronological route, so there are several perspectives: Louise, the single mother who decides to engage in a tumultuous affair with David, her boss. Adele, his wife; then there are the interactions between Adele and her childhood friend, Rob. Their POV’s annoyed me because they didn’t add much context to the story and seemed haphazardly thrown in to explain Adele’s childhood and the events that lead up to the big twist. My issue lies with the unreliability and unconstructed way Pinborough writes these POV’s. It makes it hard to care about the characters when they jump from unreliable narrator to even more unreliable narrator every couple pages. It feels like a bad game of cat and mouse, and when the twist is revealed at the end, I felt my eyes roll to the back of my head so viciously I thought I was concussed.

Speaking of the characters, they had absolutely no depth. They didn’t feel realistic. I think Pinborough was so caught up in making a “shocking” twist, that she forgot the reader has to be invested in the characters for it to fully pay off. Louise, a single mother raising a child on a secretary’s salary decides to have an affair with a married man and accidentally befriends his wife, Adele. Throughout her POV’s, all she does it go on and on about how undesirable she is, comparing herself to every other woman she runs across. She is easily manipulated and doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on as the main character. She notices that David might not be the man she thinks he is, there’s some darkness in him that she can’t put her finger on. Yet, she still decides to keep fucking her because their chemistry is so intense. *eye roll.* That’s where Adele comes in, the true star of this book. Adele is a vicious, manipulative sociopath, which we find out in the last 50 pages. She initially presents herself as David’s congenial, beautiful, fragile wife who is potentially being abused and constrained to their giant mansion. Her true personality is purposely concealed until the twist, but I admit I enjoyed her POV’s. I knew something was wrong with her, but couldn’t put my finger on it. Every other character is essentially irrelevant, the book focuses on the rat chase between these two female characters. Another problem I have in books, side characters aren’t the main focus of the story, but when your two main characters kinda suck, there’s not much else to latch onto but a flimsy plot and twist that is so contrived it’s almost comical.

Plot Twist: Spoilers Ahead

So what was this big twist you ask? If you’re one of the three people who keep up with my reviews and you plan on reading this book, just end the review here for your own sake. This twist worked and it also didn’t work for me.

In the middle of the book, “Adele’s” true plan unravels. She befriended Louise on purpose and carefully made sure David didn’t find out about their relationship. All the while, the planted seeds in Louise’s mind that David was an abusive husband who kept her locked in the house, abused alcohol, gave her a black eye, murdered their cat and her childhood friend Rob. Turns out, she did all these things herself, including beating herself to blame it on David. Yeah, the bitch is schizo. I was honestly kind of rooting for Adele, this twist reminded me of Gone Girl, just no where as clever. The big twist? Adele is able to lucid dream and leave her body when she sleeps. How she does this? No clue, we as readers just have to take it as it is. Anyways, she can lucid dream and watches Louise and David the entire affair. She orchestrates David being charged for Rob’s murder by telling Louise David murdered him and then watches Louise to see how she reacts. Then, Louise somehow figures out that Adele can lucid dream because, turns out, so can she! How she does this? No clue. Nothing is ever really explained, but alas, I went with it anyways.

Where I had to suspend my disbelief and put the book down is the ending. After Adele’s big secret is exposed, she threatens to kill herself and Louise goes to her house to stop her. Adele sets the house on fire then injects Louise with heroin and takes over her body to become her. Then, we found out that Adele has been Rob THE WHOLE BOOK. Like I see what Pinborough was doing, but my rating significantly went down after how this book ended. It ruined every other event from the beginning of the book till the twist. When authors create an entire narrative and then create some unrealistic ending to shock the reader it just leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Would I recommend this book? Yes, because I can admit it was a complete mind fuck which is how the book is advertised, but I would not give it a re-read.