Magpie by Sophie Draper
Genre: Psychological thriller, suspense
Read: 6th January 2020
Purchase: Amazon
(publication date: 28th November 2019)
★ 1 star
I loved "Cuckoo" by Sophie Draper so I was eagerly awaiting her next. However, I was somewhat disappointed. It was nothing like her previous one and I found it to be painfully slow. To the point of glacial. I wanted to enjoy it but I couldn't really find anything about it to enjoy.
Claire, Duncan and their teenage son Joe live in a beautiful hilltop house referred to as "The Barn". The setting was atmospheric, almost isolated, lending itself to a creepy sense of dread. But life is not as idyllic as it may seem. Claire has been secretly planning to leave Duncan, who has had a "secret" life of his own for years, when their son turns 18. It is clear neither of them have been happy in their marriage for a long time.
Duncan is a vet with a local practice in the village and Claire suspects his attentions has been on one of the many female employees. She just isn't sure who. Still, when Duncan is home he's absent emotionally and when he's not there, who knows where he is.
Joe is their 18 year old son, and while he hasn't been diagnosed, I strongly suspected he was "on the spectrum" with some form of ASD. He was a loner, fiercely focussed and obsessive in his interests - in this case, metal detecting - and very rarely spoke. He screamed ASD to me. So naturally he came with specific needs which of course added extra pressure to the boiler that was Claire's marriage, ready to explode at any moment.
When Joe goes missing, Claire is frantic with worry where he could be. She has constant nightmares in which she searches for her son, waking in sweats imagining the horrors that could have befallen him. Then as the story progresses to six weeks after he went missing, secrets slowly begin to surface in an attempt to keep the tension palpable.
Told in the past and present timelines titled BEFORE and AFTER, the story unfolds through Claire and Duncan's narratives. Normally I can follow this type of format, but this one I found confusing. We go forward, then six weeks back, then forward again, then six weeks back again...back and forwards constantly that I found myself dizzy and wondering which timeline I was actually in. Claire's AFTER narrative I found to be very confusing. There were times I wondered what she was talking about, alone in her dilapidated cottage she left Duncan for, hoping Joe would return.
And then when I got to the ending...it kind of made sense in a clever kind of way. However way we got there, the journey was too confusing, but when we did it was somewhat clever. But for me, it was a far too tedious journey to get there.
I have no idea why the book was called MAGPIE, though I'm sure someone may enlighten me, and in the end I really had no idea what the book was actually about. I couldn't find one redeeming quality about any of the characters. The fact that Duncan was a vet should have been a redeeming feature but he was morose and irritating and I didn't much like him at all. In fact, for a vet, I found his attitude to be rather impatient when it came to his customer's pets. Not at all like the vets I know. Both Claire and Duncan were positively depressing, as was Joe, with everyone always seemingly complaining which made MAGPIE a rather depressing read.
MAGPIE, for me, was very repetitive and tediously slow. I felt sad upon reflection as I really enjoyed "Cuckoo" and wanted so much to enjoy this one also.
I would like to thank #SophieDraper, #NetGalley and #Avon for an ARC of #Magpie in exchange for an honest review.
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