There’s nothing like reading a truly terrible novel to make you appreciate the joy that is reading a good book. Sorry (but not really), I bet you can probably figure out the tone of this review. I was supposed to be reading Christina Lauren’s Dirty Rowdy Thing, but then I saw the trailer for Darcey Bell’s A Simple Favor, starring Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively, and Rupert Friend. Did I ditch all of my reading plans to go to the bookstore and pick up a mystery/thriller where the main character is a stay-at-home mommy blogger with a missing best friend? Hell yeah, that premise sounds amazing!
The trailer is intriguing, and I have no doubt that Paul Feige has made a masterpiece out of A Simple Favor— but the source material is painfully lacking on all fronts. I know this is her debut, but I can’t find one nice thing to tell you about Bell’s boorishly basic writing style, her paper-thin (yet somehow ridiculously loathsome) characters, and her awkward attempts at suspense. The one thing I will say is that everything above makes A Simple Favor an easy, fast read, so it’s perfect to fly through by the pool.
I know, I know, my critique is harsh— perhaps unjustly. But before you rush out to buy this book at full price, at least check out the below excerpt to see if this is for you:
“One evening, Sean came to pick up Nicky and stayed for dinner. During dinner, a violent thunderstorm began. I invited Sean to spend the night in the guest room instead of going out in the weather. And he agreed.
Sean and I talked until it was so late and we were so tired that our eyes were closing. We exchanged a freighted but chaste little peck on the cheek. He went to his room, and I went to mine. As soon as I got into bed, I was wide awake. The thought of him there in the dark, in my house, was almost like having sex. I masturbated, thinking about him.”
The sample above is from Stephanie’s point of view, and it tells you basically everything you need to know about that particular character. She’s a self-obsessed twit (no one can possibly be as gullible as she is, particularly given her disgusting past) and, apart from her raging nymphomania, bland as white rice. Our other two narrators, husband-and-wife duo, Sean and Emily, are utterly unlikeable. Emily is the poor man’s version of Amy Dunne, and Sean is an out-and-out coward. The writing above is what you can expect from A Simple Favor. Seriously. It plateaus with this. I’ve read some stinkers this year, but this may just be the worst.
Here, have the recipe for a strong alcoholic drink: feel free to adjust this killer Kool-Aid with as much vodka as you need.
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