Book Review: If I Die Tonight by Alison Gaylin

If I Die Tonight

by Alison Gaylin

HarperCollins

Amazon | Barnes & Noble

 Paperback: 384 pages

Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks 

Reminiscent of the bestsellers of Laura Lippman and Harlan Coben—with a dose of Big Little Lies or Stranger Things—an absorbing, addictive tale of psychological suspense from the author of the highly acclaimed and Edgar Award-nominated What Remains of Me and the USA Today bestselling and Shamus Award-winning Brenna Spector series, in which a seemingly open-and-shut police case with a clear-cut hero and villain turns out to be anything but simple.

Late one night in the quiet Hudson Valley town of Havenkill, a distraught woman stumbles into the police station—and lives are changed forever.

Aimee En, once a darling of the ’80s pop music scene, claims that a teenage boy stole her car, then ran over another young man who’d rushed to help.

As Liam Miller’s life hangs in the balance, the events of that fateful night begin to come into focus. But is everything as it seems?

The case quickly consumes social media, transforming Liam, a local high school football star, into a folk hero, and the suspect, a high school outcast named Wade Reed, into a depraved would-be killer. But is Wade really guilty? And if he isn’t, why won’t he talk?

Told from a kaleidoscope of viewpoints—Wade’s mother Jackie, his younger brother Connor, Aimee En and Pearl Maze, a young police officer with a tragic past, If I Die Tonight is a story of family ties and dark secrets—and the lengths we’ll go to protect ourselves.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

Nobody’s perfect… What gets us in trouble is when we try and pretend we are.

The bartender at Club Halifax was wearing flannel Snoopy pajama pants and a skintight tank top with a cannabis-leaf pattern.  Yet still she was overdressed for this dismal place, which smelled of mold and decades-old cigarette smoke – an asthma attack waiting to happen.

I dated a guy once who wanted to know how far drive it was from Miami to Florida… He also thought Rosetta Stone was a civil rights leader.  Thank God he was cute.

Mason Marx was short and squat, with mean little pig eyes and the personality of bad cheese.

… Jackie could not stand that mustache.  Her eyes were drawn to it whenever Wacksman spoke, so thick and luxuriant she couldn’t help but imagine him grooming it, using a tiny tortoiseshell comb and a rack of imported oils as though it were a pet.

I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me… Such a strange expression – as though the heart were a messy closet you dug around in, forgiveness stashed in some long forgotten shoe box. 

My Review:

If I Die Tonight initially appeared to be a slowly developing tale of family drama with a divorced single mother raising two teenage boys, one of which appeared deeply troubled and even more so when a tragic fatality struck the small town and it seemed a foregone conclusion that the troubled youth was involved.  The characters were not immediately likable or admirable so it wasn’t a tale I was instantly sucked into, yet it held my attention and continued to draw me in.  Notice I said initially, it wasn’t until the plot exploded with a confluence of twist after twist that I appreciated the subtlety and care the author had taken in crafting and planting the various elements of several mysteries that compounded and converged.  The buildup was incremental and deftly devised, like a spider weaving a web. It was ingenious.  I was so wrong in my hypothesis and would never have suspected the end result, and I was more than thrilled with the satisfying conclusion and reading experience.   The stealthy and clever wordsmith Alison Gaylin has a new fangirl. 

Empress DJ

About Alison Gaylin

Alison Gaylin is the award-winning author of Hide Your Eyes and its sequel, You Kill Me; the standalones Trashed and Heartless; and the Brenna Spector series: And She Was, Into the Dark, and Stay with Me. A graduate of Northwestern University and of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, she lives with her husband and daughter in Woodstock, New York.

Find out more about Alison at her website, friend her on Facebook, or follow her on Twitter.