Rewind

3.5* but not good enough for 4*. This is well written and a page turner but I found it hard to get to grips with each character’s motivation as many were there to fit the plot. The character of Mike – Natalie’s husband – wasn’t fleshed out enough so why Natalie went on a long trip to a strange place by train and bus dragging a suitcase in order to prove things right, or wrong, about her husband’s fidelity was lost on me. That said, once you overlook the basic motivation and go with the story it’s very creepy and puts you off staying in any hotel or guesthouse! Definitely worth the read for the creep out factor.

Psycho meets Fatal Attraction meets Pulp Fiction in this riveting novel. This book time hops (the Pulp Fiction part) beginning with the murder of Instagram star Natalie in a cabin at a small resort. Andrew, the resort proprietor, is a sick ticket with a proclivity for filming his guests without their knowledge. He inadvertently records her murder but can’t decide what to do with the footage as its very existence implicates him in his crime.

As the story unfolds, we get to meet a handful of truly whackadoo people, any one of which could be responsible for Natalie’s demise. This book was a creepfest of enormous proportions, a social media cautionary tale and a great thriller.

I highly recommend!

Thank you to Catherine Ryan Howard, Blackstone Publishing and NetGalley for giving me a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Rewind by Catherine Ryan Howard
Ok this is another one of those books that hops all over making you keep track on what is going on when, usually I am not a fan if this type of book, requires me to think more than just letting the story flow through my mind but I have got to say this story was different, in a good way. Natalie who fears her husband is making her think she is losing her mind, Mike, her husband who doubts what his wife is telling him is happening, throw in a mysterious bill from an out of the way place that he says he has never heard of, add a peeper and a man who prefers his girls young, very young and add a mystery woman stir it all up and you’ve got one heck of a read! Thank you Netgalley and the Publishers for allowing me to read this book and give my opinion.

This is a very suspenseful and kind of complicated book as it is done in a then and now format with several different plots and characters to follow. It was fascinating and really creepy at times. Natalie is an Instragram success and she suspects her husband, Michael, might be cheating on her. She goes to Shanamore Cottages to spend a couple of nights of nights to try and find out if he had been there previously with another woman. The cottages are managed by Andrew who is creepy and has his own problems. Meanwhile, Audrey is living with her sister Dee and needs to find her own place. Audrey is a reporter and ends up doing an article about Natalie disappearing. There are lots of twists and turns along with some creepy characters which adds to this very suspenseful story. Thank you NetGalley and Blackstone Publishers for the ARC of this really good book.

My thoughts:
At first, I was unsure if I would like this book. The first chapter describes a bloody and vicious murder on a sleeping woman, all captured on a hidden camera. Honestly, I dislike opening with such violence before I know or care about either character. Even then, I understood that Howard had a master plan and that there were valid, good reasons for this opening, but it was still a risky strategy. My notes mentioned this, adding, Hope the payoff is worth it.

I’ll tell you straight out: it was worth it.

Here’s why:

1. That strategic opening

As I’d suspected, this opening was strategic. It’s the event that every other event revolves around.

The chapters are labelled rewind, pause, fast-forward, and play. The narrative skips around in time. Sometimes it fast-forwards into the future, presumably after the death. At other times, it rewinds into the past before the killing. Then it plays, once more, bringing us closer to the central events. And sometimes, it pauses to dwell on a particular character.

It was difficult for me to judge the effectiveness of the labels. Reading an e-book on my smart phone sometimes does strange things to manuscript formatting. (Not anyone’s fault. It just happens. Occupational hazard.)

But the changes in time are effective at building suspense. She knew exactly when to cut away from a scene, at the exact moment when I didn’t want it to end, and force me to fast-forward or rewind or pause. And of course, I kept reading. I had a migraine and I’d read the ending first (as I always do), but I still had to keep reading Rewind.

2. The perception versus reality theme

Another thing I loved was how Howard used Instagram-era obsessions.

Natalie is revealed as a social media junkie. She judges scenery by its potential for Instagram-worthy shots, gets the jitters without her phone, and knows the exact moment when she lost her signal. She’s absolutely lost without the internet. She judges all “real” things by their Internet counterpart: her walking time versus Google maps’ estimate, the scenery of Shanamore versus the images of it on the web.

No surprise, though. She’s a rising micro-influencer on Instagram with thousands of devoted and sometimes crazy followers. She makes a living off the differences between perception and reality.

Many of the characters use this, though each has different motivations. Audrey is a tabloid reporter for an online paper’s entertainment section. Actually, it’s clickbait articles, the type that exploits our cultural need to know exactly what our celebrities are doing, complete with lots of innuendo and lies.

Andrew, of course, is caught by his addiction to watching hidden camera images.

Even the architecture reminds us of a curated reality. When Natalie checks into Shanamore Cottage No. 6, she notes the floor to ceiling windows and the contrast between the inside’s neutral tones and the outside’s vivid colors. It is “as if the floor-to-ceiling windows were screens and some amazing filter had artificially enhanced the view” (Chapter titled “Rewind 0:00:20”).

Note the irony that it’s nature that appears artificial, not the decorated living room.

3. A creeping sense of dread

Howard is good at developing a sense of impending doom. Dread creeps throughout the lines. The book feels claustrophobic, with the characters trapped in a warped reality that blurs with perceptions, even when describing the vast world of the internet. The plotting is well-paced.

4. Realistic and sympathetic characters

I liked Audrey immediately. She’s being forced to find a new place to live in less than a month, her job pays almost nothing, and her ambitions outsize her experience. When she begins investigating Natalie’s disappearance, it’s obvious that she’s out of her depth and feels awkward interviewing others. But she’s smarter than others think. I sympathized with her, even though she’s exploiting Natalie’s disappearance to gain website clicks and further her career.

It took a while to warm up to Natalie, more for personal reasons than anything else. But once I did, I felt sorrow at how her life has turned out.

5. And some creepy characters

Richard Flynn, Shanamore Cottages’ “handyman” with a tendency to ignore personal space conventions. Jennifer, a bed-and-breakfast manager, whose love for a married man is outsized only by her arrogance.

And then there’s Andrew.

It might sound strange to feel sympathetic toward Andrew. Most readers will hate him, I think, and understandably so. He’s a disgusting, evil person. But he also knows that he’s disgusting, even when he tries to justify his immoral actions. (Which he knows aren’t justifiable.) He isn’t sure how to live with himself, either. That small degree of self-knowledge and remorse saves him from being a caricature. And that’s what made my loathing for him tinged with sympathy.

This was a thrilling read. It’s guaranteed to keep you reading. It might also make you rethink your social media accounts (or at least what you share on them).

Thanks again to NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing for a review copy in exchange for an honest review.