If She Dies: Book Review

by lauralizbuckley | Feb 27, 2021 | Book Reviews | 1 comment

If She Dies book blurb

How far would you go to right a wrong?

Nine months ago, Tess’s five-year-old daughter was killed in a car accident. The driver, Brady Becker, was sentenced to two years in prison. It didn’t make Tess’s pain go away.

Brady also has a daughter: A twelve-year-old named Eve who walks to Chandler Middle School every day. Tess knows this because she’s been watching Eve for the last three weeks. It isn’t fair that Brady’s daughter gets to live, while Tess’s daughter does not.

When Eve goes missing, all eyes turn to Tess, who doesn’t have an alibi. But Tess isn’t guilty.

Or so she believes.

Content warnings:

Death and grieving
Discussion of cancer
Discussion of abuse

My thoughts on If She Dies

*I was provided with a copy of If She Dies by Damppebbles blog tours in exchange for an honest review*

If She Dies is a thriller by Erik Therme, a twisty tale narrated by our protagonist, Tess. Tess is grieving the death of her daughter, Lily, killed in a traffic accident nine months ago. Tess’s husband has been trying to encourage her to get over it. All that’s done is driven her to hide her increasingly strange behaviours.

I found the writing engaging and easy to read, and I liked Tess more than I was expecting to. Maybe this isn’t fair of me, but I’ve come to assume that the mentally unstable leads of books like this will be pretty unlikeable. Not necessarily out-and-out awful, although I’ve definitely read books where they have been, but certainly not characters I’d want to hang out with in real life.

As a result, I was pleasantly surprised by Tess. She definitely had moments of being unreasonable or frosty, but she also recognised that her husband was making an effort. An imperfect, misguided effort, but an effort nonetheless. She felt bad for pushing him away, while also not quite being able to do otherwise. I guess at the end of the day I thought Tess was portrayed with a little more nuance than you sometimes see in this style of book, and I appreciated that.

The pacing started strong

I really enjoyed how information was laid out at the start of the book. There was a nice pacing of reveals of new information, and we were given time to appreciate the implications. That being said, I didn’t feel like the pace ever picked up to the extent you’d expect with a thriller, and that made the latter part of the book less engaging than it would otherwise have been.

The story made some interesting moves, and definitely didn’t feel predictable! On the other hand, I think we could have done with a little more set-up for some things. Not because they didn’t make sense necessarily. More to make the eventual conclusion feel more satisfying.

This was the first book of Therme’s I’ve read, and I’d be interested to pick up some of his others. I thought the characters were great, and the writing subtle and intelligent. Definitely a read that keeps you engaged, start to finish. I’d highly recommend it if you like thoughtful, character-driven thrillers, and don’t mind a slower pace.