'Misery meets Gone Girl'. Now how could I resist that?
Now to be fair, that's not an entirely inaccurate description of the book. You just have to add the words 'without good writing or any original thought' onto the end of it.
Dying for Christmas is a book I came across by chance and I was instantly intrigued by the blurb. Sadly I can't say this book was worth the read. It's split into two parts, with the first part being the whole Misery kidnap thing and the second half bringing the Gone Girl 'twist'. By which I mean it literally copies exactly what Gone Girl did-a vengeful blonde who dyes her hair red and fakes her own death to spite her husband. Only this time there's another girl as well.
This book is baffling in the way it doesn't make sense. If you're not paying much attention, nothing will really seem wrong with it. But important details just get skirted over. At one point, Dominic tortures Jessica by giving her a tattoo except we're never told what the tattoo is of. At all. She just refers to it as a generic tattoo at all times. The other torture methods are also really weird. Jessica is horrified by being made to eat 5 croissants...is that really so bad? 5? Sure, it's not something you'd do by choice but it's hardly the worst thing ever to happen.
Dominic is freaking hilarious as a villain. He fails in all the ways Annie Wilkes succeeded. Dominic's thing is he is a massive narcissist which unfortunately means he spells out every single detail of what he's doing and his motivations as though everyone reading the book is a moron. I was so bored and uninterested in everything he said. Annie Wilkes was scary because she didn't tell Paul anything about herself really-he stumbled across it. The first part is just pages upon pages of Dominic screaming things at Jessica, proclaiming how evil and scary he is. Can this be excused by the fact Jessica made it all up? Not in my eyes.
That's another thing-the book doesn't really explain exactly what really did happen. Like the tattoo, details are strangely sparse. The second part of the book infuriated me massively because it was a) ripped straight from Gone Girl and b) not much actually happened in it. There were so many huge coincidences that I couldn't buy the plot anymore, not that it was all that easy to swallow in the first place.
Finally, the ending...what was that? What does it mean? I guess it means that Kim let Jess go (because apparently going back to her family meant she couldn't reveal the truth for some reason) and Dominic has now become one of the voices in Jess's head but still. It's such a rushed and clichéd ending (again, ripped straight from Misery) that it sealed the deal for me. The only reason this gets two stars instead of one is that I found myself strangely compelled to keep reading it. It's not badly written in terms of style, just in terms of plot and missed details. But yeah, don't read this book. Just read Misery and Gone Girl instead (and I'm not even that fond of Gone Girl)
Overall Score:
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