A Simple Favour

Author: Darcey Bell

Rating: 2/5

Pages: 371

Year Published: 2017

Synopsis (From Goodreads): “She’s your best friend. She knows all your secrets. That’s why she’s so dangerous. A single mother's life is turned upside down when her best friend vanishes in this chilling debut thriller in the vein of Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train.

It starts with a simple favor—an ordinary kindness mothers do for one another. When her best friend, Emily, asks Stephanie to pick up her son Nicky after school, she happily says yes. Nicky and her son, Miles, are classmates and best friends, and the five-year-olds love being together—just like she and Emily. A widow and stay-at-home mommy blogger living in woodsy suburban Connecticut, Stephanie was lonely until she met Emily, a sophisticated PR executive whose job in Manhattan demands so much of her time.

But Emily doesn’t come back. She doesn’t answer calls or return texts. Stephanie knows something is terribly wrong—Emily would never leave Nicky, no matter what the police say. Terrified, she reaches out to her blog readers for help. She also reaches out to Emily’s husband, the handsome, reticent Sean, offering emotional support. It’s the least she can do for her best friend. Then, she and Sean receive shocking news. Emily is dead. The nightmare of her disappearance is over.

Or is it? Because soon, Stephanie will begin to see that nothing—not friendship, love, or even an ordinary favor—is as simple as it seems.”

(Spoiler Warning)

A simple favor had such a potential. I was more than excited to read this book, but after the first three chapters I soon realized that it wasn’t anything like I had expected it to be, and not in a good way.

What I didn’t like about it was that it was too predictable. There were too many clues and too much foreshadowing for it to be suspenseful. It was easy to figure out what was really happenng, like that it wasn’t Emily’s body in the lake but her sister’s, that Miles would be Stephanie’s half brother’s son and that Emily would “win” the game in the end. The characters annoyed me, and I couldn’t relate to any of them.

It bothered me that in one moment Emily claimed to love her sister, and didn’t want her sister to die and in the next she it was like she wanted her to commit suicide, and that Stephanie one moment was in love with Sean and then wasn’t. Their opinions and emotions switched so fast that it was just weird and confusing and some of it just didn’t make any sense. In the first part of the book, Stephanie was all of over Steven and in the second part it was like she never even cared about him, and that just doesn’t make sense. Feelings just don’t stop or go away one day, but gradually little by little.

The book focused a lot on Stephanie’s past and the incest but I didn’t feel like it contributed to the actual plot in any way. Sure, Emily used it to threaten Stephanie at one point, but the author didn’t really do anything with it and that disappointed me. I just felt that Bell could have done so much more with it.

I hated how abuse was used as a way to let Emily get away and win Stephanie over on her side again. I don’t think that abuse should be used as an excuse in books, even though I understand that Emily doesn’t care about that, as many victims of abuse don’t dare to speak up out of fear of not being believed. Lying about being abused in a book can contribute to the stigma (that I hate) that exists of not believing victims of abuse, because what if they are faking it like Emily (Ugh!).

It felt unrealistic how easily the police and everyone else accepted Emily’s story, how she got her job back in the blink of an eye, it just didn’t make sense at all. One positivity thing about the book however was that I really liked how the blog, even though I didn’t like it, came to use in order to try to reach Emily. That was really clever and thoughtful of the author.

The story was told out of first person point of view, but switched between Seans, Emily’s and Stephanie’s perspective. I wouldn’t say that there was an unreliable narrator as all of the characters spoke their truths when it was their point of view. This really disappointed me, as I thought there would be more twists and that Emily would be more unreliable, or harder to figure out.

The story took place in New England in the US, and had themes such as secrets, motherhood and friendship. The book had an open ending, which I usually like, but this time I just didn’t feel satisfied. I really liked the idea that Bell had when she wrote this book, but I just didn’t enjoy it.

Love,

Julia