Open Your Eyes by Paula Daly

3.5 Stars

The first thing that struck me about this book was how unreliable a narrator Jane appears; from the outset there is that feeling that appearences matter to her so whe will only ever tell you things from her own particularly skewed viewpoint.  She says she wants to be a writer but instead of following that dream she did the next best thing and married one, a relatively successful one at that and now she is playing happy families with Leon and the 2 children (1 boy, 1 girl - aww how perfect).  The live a seemingly respectable middle class existence with the only blot on Jane's landscape being the argumentative elderly neighbours from across the road.

All this is thrown in to sharp relief when Leon is attacked and there seem to be no clue as to who or how.  Shot in front of his children the local police seem to think Jane is involved and she is convinced it was the curmdgeon from across the road, Lawrence or his peculiar son.  From this point on the story becomes more of a crime thriller than an expose of domestic life; albeit one told from Jane's jaundiced point of view.

What really stood out for me in this book was the detail surrounding Leon's brain injury.  How vast the memory loss was, the mercurial mood changes, the loss of impulse control.  This is told with such delicacy and brutal honesty that it drives home how life changing one small trauma to the brain could be, let alone a massive one as suffered by Leon.  ther eis little to no support when he is deemed fit to go home and even I had to sympathise with Jane as she struggled to balance the demands of two small children and a damaged husband.

As you can tell from the above I really did not warm to the main character at all.  From the off I just couldn't trust her and as proceedings progressed I actually started to hope that Ledecky would find the smoking gun that proved it was Jane who shot Leon.  It is a pity that I took such a dislike to the main character as the plotting of the tale is execptionally well thought through and constructed.  The writing flows on to the page and the author's voice never gets in the way of the characters (always a plus).  The rest of the characters, the periphery if you like - even someone as important to the story as Leon is only ever really peripheral - are all beautifully flawed and believable as people.  Leon's mother and sister are a gorgeous double act and realistic in their reactions to both the situation and each other.

I did enjoy the book and the twist as to the perpetrator and the reasons behind it were well hidden and only really hinted at about 20 - 30 pages before the big reveal.  Basically, we suspect only when the author is ready for us to do so and, in this case it works well, it was a bit of a gamble to throw so many red herrings in to the mix but Ms Daly pulled it off.   It was also nice to see a novel set in Liverpool that wasn't all about the seedy underbelly or the heart of gold under a tough exterior Northener.

I readily admit that I marked this book down because the narrator of the book drove me potty.  If you happen to like her then this will be a 5 Star read for sure.

THIS IS AN HONEST AND UNBIASED REVIEW OF A FREE COPY OF THE BOOK RECEIVED FROM THE PIGEONHOLE.