Thank you to Inkubator Books Team for sending me an advance readers copy. All views are my own
“What she did” is an easy and enjoyable read, with a decent ending — a lesson in understanding that “love thy neighbour” comes with boundaries, that people often cross out of desperation to avoid dealing with their own misery. If you are a fan of “Desperate Housewives” then this book is for you if you are willing to accept that this book has some flaws.
As if ripped from the Desperate Housewives universe, What She Did by Lauren Dykovitz portrays what happens when you take “love thy neighbour” to a whole different level.
The book shines in its strong structure and quick pace. Where this book fails is also derived, I believe from the quick pace. Striving to maintain pace over story development, more often than not, it leads into a repetition of the same events across the two POVs. It quickly became confusing, as the characters’ words and opinions on events started to blur together, making me wonder more than once whether I’d already read a given chapter. This is most noticeable in the second act, where the necessary setup for the third act made the repetition especially apparent.
One thing I’d have loved to see developed further is the characters’ motivation. A reveal that was saved for the third act could have worked better as a first-act motivator for the obsession’s development, delivering a stronger payoff later. Alternatively, cutting this reveal entirely from the third act could have made the epilogue more believable. As it stands, it reads more like a statement of fact the reader is simply expected to accept, rather than something the reader has a feeling might be the case from the get-go and getting the confirmation in the end.
I read this book in two days, and if I’d been poolside with a margarita, I might’ve knocked it out cover-to-cover in one. If you’re willing to accept its flaws the same way you’re willing to accept a character’s flaws, this is a great way to spend your weekend. It delivers exactly (nothing more, nothing less) what it sets out to do: a story between two neighbours whose worlds are more intertwined than you might think.
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