One Down by Diana Wilkinson
Genre: Psychological thriller
Read: 14th January 2023
Published: 16th January 2023
★ 1 star
DESCRIPTION:
I’m not being paranoid! It’s all there in the crossword clues…in black and white. There’s no doubt the threat is real. Today, the answers spell out my murder.
May Third. Amanda. Silver Birch. Noontime. Assassination.
Is Nathan, my estranged crossword-setter husband, really planning to kill me? Or is it someone closer to home?
I check the door is bolted, slither to the ground, and count down the seconds to noon. There’s nothing left to do, and no one I can call. Who’d believe me anyway? The lady on the ground floor has already left the building, and my new boyfriend is on holiday. Or is he?
A tread of footsteps. A rap at the door, and I close my eyes, hold my breath…
MY THOUGHTS:
I was so excited to read ONE DOWN as the premise sounded incredibly intriguing. A murder foretold through crossword clues...but...*yawn*...
Amanda is our main narrator who spends the first good portion of the book slowly taking us through every agonising step of crossword clues. And I do mean every agonising step. Of every clue. Until she had all the words on the grid spelt out in order...giving a name, a time, a place, a threat. But was it real? Or Amanda just paranoid?
Personally I thought she was a bit paranoid. But then we are thrown headlong into her dissection of crossword clues that obviously meant something to her and yet meaning nothing to us. There was no real preamble (unless you count the prologue which gave no indication of anything), no backstory - nothing to give us direction or clues as to what was actually going on.
Then after she has solved and deciphered the entire grid, we are taken back three year previous to her then husband Nathan, who sounded a bit like a twat to me. But the time frame became confusing as he was referring to when he met Amanda and married her three years before in 2018 which add three years from then becomes 2021...but that's only (just) two years ago (from now), not three. So when are we actually talking about? I was thoroughly confused.
To make matters even more confusing, one of the narratives appeared to be a dog's! OK...so I did end up skimming the book after about 15% in so not sure whose narrative is whose, but Merlong was a narrative...and I did note that the (then) narrator referred to Merlong as a dog. So therefore, the narrative was the dog's? OK...from there, I pretty much gave up because if anything were to happen to the dog...I didn't want to know. And I wasn't sticking around to find out.
But one thing is for sure...Amanda is an unreliable narrator. She's completely paranoid - with good reason, I'd say, but she's still paranoid. And I couldn't connect to her and didn't like anyone else. I felt as if I were in an alternate universe whilst reading. Nothing seemed tangible or real. Just weird.
I must be in the minority here as I just couldn't get into the story and my head was exploding with cryptic clues. I was disappointed as ONE DOWN promised to be a chilling and intriguing read but for me, it fell flat.
I would like to thank #DianaWilkinson, #Netgalley, #BoldwoodBooks and #RachelsRandomResources for an ARC of #OneDown in exchange for an honest review.
MEET THE AUTHOR:
Although she hails from Belfast, Diana now lives in Herfordshire.
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