I just finished this novel, and to be perfectly honest, I’m still not entirely sure what the heck I just read. There were many moments where suspension of disbelief wasn’t just required, it was doing Olympic-level gymnastics. Case in point: the magical, self-cleaning, self-repairing stairs to the basement. When Emily first sees them, it’s easy to understand why the basement is off-limits. The railing is splintered, the steps are damaged, and one is literally broken in half, as if someone stepped too hard on it. Yet the moment she’s alone and decides to sneak down there (based on something her parrot says, no less) the stairs are suddenly pristine. Clean. No dust, no spider webs, wiped down like someone just finished housekeeping. And then, halfway down, a step cracks beneath her, causing her to drop the flashlight and nearly fall. So… which is it? Are the stairs fine or not? Or are we meant to believe Emily is having a full-blown psychotic break?
Which brings me to Emily herself. She’s been plagued by nightmares her entire life and knows something traumatic happened to her as a child, there’s even a scar to prove it, but she has no memory of the event. She’s been diagnosed with PTSD and is actively in therapy, so it’s not completely unreasonable to think she might be imagining things. That said, I found it more than a little convenient that her grip on reality seems to deteriorate even more the moment she arrives at her husband’s childhood home. It felt less like an organic psychological unraveling and more like the plot flipping a switch when it was convenient.
Unfortunately, the constant back-and-forth of am I crazy / am I not crazy quickly became exhausting. And certain moments should have been massive clues that Emily wasn’t imagining everything. Her fixation on possibly hurting Rascal, for example, makes absolutely no sense when she had been on a boat with her husband for a significant amount of time before Rascal jumped from the cliffs. The timing alone proves she couldn’t have hurt him. That should have been a glaring indication that not everything was in her head. Also, for me? The harming animals angle? Hard no. I nearly DNF’ed the book over that alone.
Another thing I couldn’t wrap my head around was Daniel’s decision to bring Emily there in the first place. He knows the truth about her past. He knows how deeply traumatized she is. He isn’t a villain exactly (at worst, I’d say he has some serious co-dependency issues going on), but it was incredibly strange that he brought her to that house, only to immediately try to force her to leave the moment she starts asking questions about the women in the basement. He had to know that returning to that place could trigger her memories.
And then there’s the ending. Where most, though not all, of the secrets finally come to light. We learn who the woman in the basement really is, how she ended up there, and just how deep her own psychological trauma runs. After that reveal, I was honestly shocked that Emily could stand to look at Daniel, let alone even consider forgiving him.
One bright spot for me was the brief chapter where Emily tracks down a grandmother who is still alive. I genuinely liked that moment and the sense of closure it offered her. That said, I couldn’t help but wonder what the grandmother’s reaction would have been if she had known exactly who Emily ended up marrying. That felt like a missed opportunity to me.
In the end, I’ve enjoyed other novels by this author far more than this one. While this wasn’t a total loss, it never fully came together for me. That said, I’ll probably still read more of their work in the future.
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