notes from the couch

The boyfriend is pretty short, I’ve known a couple people that finished it in one day, and it took me about 3 days to get through it, so it’s an easy read at least. The book starts off with the murder of Sydney’s best friend, and we primarily follow her quest to find the killer, while also finding a mysterious man that she saw months before that she thinks might be “the one”. I had heard a lot of mixed things about this book, some people saying it’s worth the hype, others saying the characters are some of the dumbest they’ve read in a long time, and unfortunately, I mainly have to agree with the latter.

It is interesting how the book switches perspectives between present day Sydney and Tom from the past and then weaves both together to show Tom as an adult and as the boyfriend of Sydney. However, Sydney is one of the less interesting characters of McFadden’s books, and she is kind of clueless at times to an annoying point. I found Tom’s backstory a lot more interesting, and the murder of his father, guilt and fear of himself and others, and his relationship with Slug were way more interesting and better dynamics than anything that was going on in Sydney’s life. The best part about Sydney’s story was finding Tom, so I feel like as a protagonist, she was pretty boring.

The first quarter or so of the book was pretty hard to get into. It started getting more interesting after the first murder, but everything before that was pretty tough to read, and definitely cringeworthy at parts, hence why it took me 3 days instead of just a few hours or so to finish it. The writing wasn’t terrible, and the plot twist at the end actually got me, which I can’t say for other McFadden books I’ve read (I figured out all the Housemaid plot twists less than halfway through), so that was fun. I love a good mystery that I can’t figure out until the end. However, the writing was definitely weaker than the first two Housemaid books, for example. It wasn’t unreadable, but it certainly wasn’t great. But again, some parts were interesting, unfortunately mainly with Tom though, who wasn’t even technically the protagonist.

But all in all, the characters were pretty unlikeable, even though some parts of the story itself were pretty interesting. Would I recommend reading it? If you’re trying to reach your book goal for the year, it’s definitely an easy read and I didn’t have a terrible time. Would I read it again or say that you should totally read it though? No. There’s other books you can spend your time on. Even other McFadden books that are better. If you’re thinking of reading it because it’s Freida McFadden and you just really like her, just go read The Housemaid again or something. But not this one. Maybe I’m being a little harsh; My girlfriend and her sister enjoyed it, but I just didn’t think it was worth the time.

My couch rating: 5.5/10