I hope you all are having a wonderful Thanksgiving and were able to spend it with loved ones. I was able to come home for a short stay to see my daughter and her family. Until he teaches me how to fly the plane (I say that like I’m serious), I’ll spend my in-air hours reading.
Karen Perry, the author of The Innocent Sleep is actually two authors: Paul Perry and Karen Gillece, both prize-winning authors and both having written critically acclaimed books. I didn’t know that fact before reading this title and only learned of it as I read the back matter of the book. The reason I mention this fact is that it runs parallel to my review.
Synopsis:
Tangiers. Harry is preparing his wife’s birthday dinner while she is still at work and their son, Dillon, is upstairs asleep in bed. Harry suddenly remembers that he’s left Robin’s gift at the café in town. It’s only a five-minute walk away and Dillon’s so tricky to put down for the night, so Harry decides to run out on his own and fetch the present.
Disaster strikes. An earthquake hits, buildings crumble, people scream and run. Harry fights his way through the crowd to his house, only to find it razed to the ground. Dillon is presumed dead, though his body is never found.
Five years later, Harry and Robin have settled into a new kind of life after relocating to their native Dublin. Their grief will always be with them, but lately, it feels as if they’re ready for a new beginning. Harry’s career as an artist is taking off and Robin has just realized that she’s pregnant.
But when Harry gets a glimpse of Dillon on the crowded streets of Dublin, the past comes rushing back at both of them. Has Dillon been alive all these years? Or was what Harry saw just a figment of his guilt-ridden imagination? With razor-sharp writing, Karen Perry’s The Innocent Sleep delivers a fast-paced, ingeniously plotted thriller brimming with deception, doubt, and betrayal.
Review:
The story follows Harry and Robin in a non-linear fashion through their relationship. It switches viewpoints at almost every chapter, between Harry and Robin, but not always in chronological order. This isn’t a huge problem, although there were a couple times I had to pause to figure out if I was reading ‘now or then’.
The characters were fleshed out enough to sympathize with, their personalities different and consistent. There was not a lot of setting description, which I liked, as I am not one who wants every little detail written out. I’d rather garner a few details from the book and imagine the rest for myself.
When I say the fact that there were two authors for this title runs parallel to my review, I am referring to the actual writing. The first three-quarters of the book are written out, a pace set and maintained, until the three-quarter mark. At that point, it changes. It begins to read like elaborate bullet points, the narrator telling the sequence of events one paragraph at a time. It reads like a narration to no one in particular, even though it is basically precise details being told to one particular person, in most cases Dillon. Even after Harry is killed, he relays the account of what happened to his son. I found that awkward as the entire book was written in real time, so this transfer of information did not seem to fit. It was obviously for the reader’s benefit. I saw it as a lazy way to reveal what had happened in as few words as possible. At one point, the thought crossed my mind that it wasn’t reading like the same author anymore. I have no way of knowing how these authors split the writing, and I may very well be wrong about one person writing the last quarter of the book, but learning there were two authors somehow vindicated my initial impression.
At one point near the end, a new POV character, Garrick, is introduced. Even though it is not the first mention of him in the book, the fact that a new POV was introduced so late in the story had an odd feel to it. It went from being Harry and Robin’s story and all of a sudden, it was Garrick’s story, too.
Entertainment Weekly said, “You won’t see the twist coming.” I don’t agree. The main storyline was predictable, and a little drawn out. What I didn’t see coming and saw no real reason for other than shock value, was Harry’s death.
There were reasons to keep reading, but there were also things that slowed it down. The Innocent Sleep was not a bad read and worthy of 3.5 stars on Amazon’s review system.
Have you read The Innocent Sleep? Share your thoughts…
K.E. GARVEY 