Book Review: Everything You Told Me

I’m a bit of an audio book junkie. I love opening my Audible Daily Deal email every morning. An author who is often featured is Lucy Dawson; several of her books have been on sale at one time or another. She’s British and writes domestic suspense, and I’m usually entertained by her writing. I was mostly entertained with Everything You Told Me but I must confess, I only finished the book because I wanted to find out if the character who I thought was the villain from nearly the very beginning, was actually the villain. I didn’t want to be right, but I was.

WARNING! SPOILERS ARE AHEAD. Don’t read the rest of the rest of this post if you don’t want the story spoiled for you! I can’t review this book without talking about the ending and why I found it so frustrating and obvious.

Okay, so the story begins with the main character, Sally, drugged and confused, walking toward a cliff in Cornwall like she’s going to jump. Someone stops her and they find what seems like a suicide note in her pocket, written in Sally’s handwriting. Officials take over, contact her family, and Sally is sent home. Then the story flashes back to a couple of days before, and we learn about Sally’s life. Her two children, Chloe and Theo, are super needy and only want her, not their dad, to hold them. Theo cries all the time. Sally’s husband, Matthew, is sort of a jerk.

So is nearly everyone else in her life. Her parents imply that Sally is too fragile to handle being a mother. Her best friend, Liv, shuts her out after what she thinks is a suicide attempt by Sally. Sally’s brother is engaged to a horrible woman named Kelly, and everyone takes her side in the conflict between Kelly and Sally. The only person that seems at all cool is Matthew’s mom, Caroline. She is a divorced psychiatrist, super sophisticated and stylish, and very good at what she does.

I mean, it was so obvious that Caroline would be the villain. As I wrote about in a previous post, it’s nearly impossible to find a major female character over 50, whose primary role isn’t as someone’s mother or wife, who ISN’T  a villain. Caroline could have been such a great character, but as it turned out, she just didn’t like Sally. That was her motivation when she formed a plan to help Matthew, and she drugged Sally and put her in a taxi to Cornwall because Matthew was having an affair with Liv and was in some financial trouble, and this would get him out of a bad situation because… okay. That part made no sense. 

Honestly though, as a writer, I find coming up with a good plot and character motivations for antagonists to be extremely challenging. I’m sure I’d have a hard time coming up with something better. That said, I wish I could recommend Everything You Told Me, but I can’t.