Hard Girls
This was a book that was a bit of a slog for me to get through. It was another NYT recommended book (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/17/bo…) and given that I have a predisposition towards thrillers, I thought it’d be good.
The book itself is quite well written and follows the track of twin girls who are looking to find their mother and uncover some mysteries in their lives. There is quite a lot of jumping back and forth between their past that goes back to when they’re kids and their now mid-life. The perspective is mostly told through the eyes of one sister, the one who went to jail for a crime, and has a child and a mostly “normal” life. She’s quite a bit disassociated with her life however, and suffers the same mid-life pangs most of us does.
The other sister has the exciting life, the life of an independent shop owner with more than a hint of a dark past. Their mom is like a Jane Bond who comes and goes in their life and has more than a hint of chicanery and their dad is mostly the straight shooter, although also a little involved in the dark side.
The unrealistic part is that all of them kind of talk past each other or pass each other in the deep of the night while living with one another. The kids start a spy club in school, the mom is heavily invovled with agriculture and has affairs left and right, the dad is slightly paranoid, but mostly harmless.
The book is mostly hard reading because you have a hard time caring enough about any of the characters. None of them are nice, and although I get that that’s the vibe the author is going for, it doesn’t make it any easier to read. The hook is there, but the back and forth really does not make it easy reading. I almost skipped the “back” chapters to stick to the main plot, and am slightly glad I didn’t for it gave some back story, but it was mostly filler in my opinion.
The pay off for reading through the book is still there, but I felt slightly unsatisfied with how everything ended. I think there are better books of this ilk, so giving this a 3* and a pass unless you have nothing better to read.