Title: The Soulmate
Author: Sally Hepworth
Series: n/a
Well and effectively written
Thank you to Sally Hepworth, St. Martin’s Press, and NetGalley for allowing me to read a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.
I hate narratives that jump around in time while also switching POV. Those narratives make the worst audiobooks, because if you’re distracted for even a moment, you might miss a switch and become confused.
However, this story could not have been told well without a nonlinear chronology. Hepworth uses it to reveal twists brilliantly, to gradually increase the tension and the stakes. I still don’t like it, but it’s hard to be mad when it’s done so well.
I also want to take issue with Amanda’s omniscient POV—it felt like cheating somehow—but it was also well utilized. You don’t realize how well until the final chapters; without Amanda’s POV, we couldn’t have understood or sympathized with Max.
I can’t decide how to feel about Pippa. On one hand, she seems too stupid to live. On the other, as Pippa herself describes, Gabe was a storm of charm, energy, beauty, and vulnerability that swept her up and carried her like a piece of debris caught in a tornado. She felt like a shade of beige made interesting only by the refractive glow of his neon. And his good did much to mask his bad; he was a good father, and at times he was a good husband and person in general, but his self-centeredness and entitlement, coupled with his mental illness, made him toxic.
I want to judge Pippa for not realizing that sooner—the way they met raised all kinds of red flags for me—but I hesitate because…. No, you know what, I’m judging her. It took murder for her to realize how psycho Gabe was? She was so emotionally needy, her self-esteem and -respect so low, that she was a prime target for someone like Gabe. He gave her a little attention, and she worshiped him for it. She was the perfect enabler for him.
And her stupid, well-intentioned family—they were concerned enough to pick up their lives and move when Pippa did, but they never said anything? There’s not wanting to meddle, then there’s turning a blind eye. Moving is kind of a big deal, you’d think they’d want to try an honest conversation before it came to that. Were they that afraid of confrontation? What did the mom’s mother-in-law do to the mom to make her so afraid of interjecting?
But all that was exactly the point of the book. A portrait of how circumstance and perspective could cloud reality and objectivity, could obscure the obvious.
No, for all I wanted to dislike this book, I have to admit I think it was well and effectively written.
