Book Review: The Best of Intentions by Joshua MacMillan
Title: The Best of Intentions
Author: Joshua MacMillan
Release date: July 21st, 2021
Thanks to Joshua for reaching out and sending me a copy of his debut to read.
As someone who loves, loves, loves reading, I go into each book super excited and absolutely expecting to love each and every story I come across. But, as we all know, that is impossible and never the case.
With ‘The Best of Intentions,’ I went in with a hesitancy, due to the prevalence PTSD looked to be playing in the story line. I find that if not handled well, PTSD can be used the same way as somebody with an amputation or cognitive issue – a crutch that is convenient to make a character lesser than and an easy target. I was also a bit hesitant due to the PTSD narrative being related to the man’s military history. I’m personally not a huge fan of military fiction, so I wasn’t sure how this would all play out.
One thing I have found though, over the course of posting reviews for six years or so now, being Canadian and having not lived and had an American upbringing has definitely created an internal measuring stick when things like guns, guns in the home and guns around kids comes into play. I say all of that with the asterisk that I grew up hunting and for a period of time had both my prohibited and non-prohibited firearm licenses. I currently own two firearms, neither of which are here at my house, and neither of which are functional, fire-ble rifles.
What I liked: The story follows our main character, Corey, his wife Sam and their son Jonathan. Corey is a manager at a security company and lately his nightmares have returned. He says he has PTSD under control, even as he sleeps less, dreams more and starts to drink more frequently.
When, randomly, one day, he finds a note that says ‘TEN DAYS’ and a following note, two days later that reads ‘EIGHT DAYS,’ he grows unhinged and the story unravels even more.
MacMillan does a fantastic job of making you see how tight of a family unit they are and how much Sam cares for and worries about her husband. Corey works hard and when home, tries his best to instill morals and values into his son, getting him to help with chores and be a good kid.
The crux of the story is whether you don’t see the obvious clues and tells as to what is going to happen. I saw it about 25% in, but if you decide to play along and see how far down the crazed well Corey is going to travel, you’ll enjoy a fast-paced read.
What I didn’t like: As I mentioned, the crux of this story revolves around Corey’s descent into his PTSD, drinking and ultimately paranoia over these ‘mysterious’ clues. We see him drink more, clean his guns, leave his guns around the house and not have any issues about it whenever confronted. As well, for a guy who was supposed to be considered super responsible and the manager of where he works, his phone is constantly dead, which would be a major priority for someone to keep charged if they had that level of job responsibility.
Ultimately, none of that worked for me and, unfortunately, I knew how the story was going to end very early into it, which totally eliminated any emotional impact it should’ve had when it finally happened.
Why you should buy this: I think MacMillan does a good job of creating tension and wanting you to root for our characters. I think if you read the synopsis and it does grab you, you’ll have a fun time, if not an obvious time and that’ll be an individual reader response each and every time.
For this reader, it sadly didn’t pull me along like I think the author intended and created a situation where I just couldn’t get the necessary attachment.
2/5
