Review: I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh

I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh

Blurb from Goodreads:

The next blockbuster thriller for those who loved The Girl on the Train and Gone Girl...a novel with "an astonishing intensity that drags you in and never—ever—lets you go." (Daily Mail, UK)

On a rainy afternoon, a mother's life is shattered as her son slips from her grip and runs into the street . . .

I Let You Go follows Jenna Gray as she moves to a ramshackle cottage on the remote Welsh coast, trying to escape the memory of the car accident that plays again and again in her mind and desperate to heal from the loss of her child and the rest of her painful past. 

At the same time, the novel tracks the pair of Bristol police investigators trying to get to the bottom of this hit-and-run. As they chase down one hopeless lead after another, they find themselves as drawn to each other as they are to the frustrating, twist-filled case before them. Elizabeth Haynes, author of Into the Darkest Corner, says, “I read I Let You Go in two sittings; it made me cry (at least twice), made me gasp out loud (once), and above all made me wish I'd written it . . . a stellar achievement.”

My Review:
 

This was pretty good, not much of a mystery and not too thrilling but had I not just read a stellar book with similar and familiar territory (Into the Darkest Corner), I probably would have liked this even more.  However, I am still annoyed by the Gone Girl/The Girl on the Train comparisons.  Yes, it's another unreliable female narrator but that doesn't mean we should treat all of these books the same.  This book was actually originally released in 2014 but it got a shiny new cover and is being re-released after The Girl on the Train's  (another British female unreliable narrator) monumental popularity.  There were also two threads to the story (they weren't even divergent, really) and I didn't like the characters that were trying to solve this crime.  They were so insipid.  I think this one was also hyped and so well reviewed that I was expecting something a bit more -- no twist, no big thrill -- but a solid mystery that you will figure out half way through.  It is a fast read and definitely enjoyable.

I would recommend this to anyone that likes the current crop of thrillers with unreliable female narrators -- this was better than some of the others I've read lately.  For me, it was a pale imitation of Into the Darkest Corner but, perhaps, if I had read this one first, I would have liked it even more or just as much as that one.  I Let You Go is scheduled to be released today May 3, 2016, and you can purchase HERE!  

A hush descends on the court and the magistrate fixes me with an unsmiling gaze.  I have the absurd urge to tell him that I'm not like the usual occupants of his court.  That I grew up in a house like his, and that I went to university; held dinner parties; had friends.  That I was once confident and outgoing.  That before last year I had never broken the law, and that what happened was a terrible mistake.  But his eyes are disinterested and I realize he doesn't care who I am, or how many dinner parties I have held.  I'm just another criminal through his doors; no different from any other.  I feel my identity being stripped away from me once more.