Murder Month - DNFing Fool Me Once

If you know me or my blog well, you guys know that I hate DNFing books/ebooks/audiobooks. Hate it so much. And with this themed Crime/Thriller month, I didn't want this to happen. I didn't want to DNF anything. So, the fact I DNF an audiobook I got for review is just... well... makes me feel like an awful book blogger.

But, like I have said in the past, audiobooks are my experiment reads. I always seem to want to try new things out on audiobooks in the past few months so it's lethal when Leanne from Midas emails me about upcoming audiobooks from Audible...

I have never read Harlan Coben before. But after I read the synopsis of Fool Me Once and watched the book trailer for it, I was very intrigued. It just sounded right up my street.

For those not aware of this book, Fool Me Once, Maya has just buried her husband. She has a two year old daughter and she suffers from PTSD from her days of being special ops. So when a friend gives her a nanny cam, Maya just takes it to please her friend. But early one morning, Maya checks the nanny cam, and sees something that isn't possible. Her dead husband playing with their daughter...

This screams that I would have liked it. A thriller where you can't be sure what's fact and fiction. Something that screams twists and turns. So, where did it go wrong? Why, after nearly four hours, I went "I have to stop"?

It's a mix of things, which reminds me that even though I like a genre, I'm not going to enjoy reading all the books within that genre.

The first thing is that I am not use to a slow thriller. I like my crime/thriller books to have pace, to have a hook. And this felt lacking. It was too slow paced for me.

Because of the pacing, I found myself getting bored very easily and had to push myself very hard to return to the story. This was my huge problem - I need a reason to return and that wasn't there.

I probably now sound nit-picky, but Maya, our lead... I had huge problems with her. I see what Harlan was trying to do. He wanted Maya to be an unreliable lead - like what we see in The Girl on the Train and Gone Girl. He wanted us to mistrust her judgment. But I had issues with her. She wasn't likeable and I never warmed to her. And I never thought "Is this real?" as I think the story was told in third person. If it was told in first person, I think it would have kept my attention for longer.

Also, there were times I couldn't help but wonder. Did the author write this story with a male lead and then, either very late in the writing or in the edits, decided to change the lead's gender?

I have to say this again: I listened to under 4 hours worth so this isn't a review. So, why, WHY are you writing this post, I hear you cry? Because I don't want to lie and go "Look at all the cool crime books I read". I want to show you guys that I tried to be braver - try and push myself as a reader and blogger - and sometimes, it worked and otherwise, it didn't.

And that's not a bad thing. Some stories will grab you by the throat and make you sped through to the end, and others won't. That's not a bad thing, dear reader. It's a good thing to try new things and there's no shame in reading the first few pages and going "Actually, this isn't for me."