Would you turn the page?

Here’s one of Rhamey’s posts at Writer Unboxed: Would you turn the page of this bestseller?

Here’s the page, without the lead-up or anything, just the page:

***

I am desperately, painfully, completely, and stupidly in love.

Her name is Daisy. We met when we were four years old. I’ve been in love with the girl since age four—that’s how pathetic I am. I saw her at the playground feeding bits of her sandwich to the hungry squirrels, and all I could think was that I had never met any living creature as beautiful or as kind as Daisy Driscoll. And I was gone.

For a long time, I didn’t tell her how I felt. I couldn’t. It seemed impossible that this angel with golden hair and pale blue eyes and skin like the porcelain of our bathroom sink could ever feel a tenth of what I felt for her, so there was no point in trying.

But lately, that’s changed.

Lately, Daisy has been letting me walk her home from school. If I’m lucky, she lets me hold her hand, and she gives me that secret little smile on her cherry-red lips that makes my knees weak. I’m starting to think she might want me to kiss her.

But I’m scared. I’m scared that if I tried to kiss her, she would slap me across the face. I’m scared that if I told her how I really feel, she would look at me in sympathy and tell me she doesn’t feel the same way. I’m scared she might never let me walk her home again.

But that’s not what I’m most scared of.

What I am most scared of is that if I lean in to kiss Daisy, she will let me do it. I’m scared / snip

***

This is cheating in the worst way. I’m sure Rhamey has a rule about how many words he’ll include and then he snips the entry short. But here’s where that was going:

***

What I am most scared of is that if I lean in to kiss Daisy, she will let me do it. I’m scared that she will agree to be my girlfriend. I’m scared that she will allow me into her bedroom when her parents aren’t home so that we can finally be alone together.

And I’m terrified that the moment I get her alone, I will wrap my fingers around her pretty, white neck and squeeze the life out of her.

***

I like this. In fact, I liked it before that kicker at the end. Do you know where I first started liking this opening? With that row of four adverbs in the first sentence. I liked the narrator’s voice from that moment. Then I got to the kicker, and that’s quite a jolt, isn’t it?

This book is The Boyfriend by McFadden. It’s a novel of psychological suspense, it says. The opening makes me think of I Am Not a Serial Killer. Here’s how that one starts:

***

Mrs. Anderson was dead.

Nothing flashy, just old age — she went to bed one night and never woke up. They say it was a peaceful, dignified way to die, which I suppose is technically true, but the three days it took for someone to realize they hadn’t seen her in a while removed most of the dignity from the situation. Her daughter eventually dropped by to check on her and found her corpse three days rotted and stinking like roadkill. And the worst part isn’t the rotting, it’s the three days — three whole days before anyone cared enough to say, “Wait, where’s that old lady that lives down by the canal?” There’s not a lot of dignity in that.

But peaceful? Certainly. She died quietly in her sleep on August thirtieth, according to the coroner, which means she died two days before something tore Jeb Jolley’s insides out and left him in a puddle behind the laundromat. We didn’t know it at the time, but that made Mrs. Anderson the last person in Clayton County to die of natural causes for almost six months. The Clayton Killer got the rest.

***

That’s a great opening, or at least, it’s another opening that seems gentle and then features a hard kick. I Am Not a Serial Killer is a fantasy novel. Or horror. Either way, it’s a murder mystery with a supernatural type of killer and a rather peculiar protagonist. I liked it quite a bit, though it gets fairly grim. Horror, to me, is more tolerable than (most) novels described as psychological thrillers, at least as long as the good guys win in the end. I like the opening of The Boyfriend, but I don’t like the idea of the story. Here’s the description:

***

She’s looking for the perfect man. He’s looking for the perfect victim.

Sydney Shaw, like every single woman in New York, has terrible luck with dating. She’s seen it all: men who lie in their dating profile, men who stick her with the dinner bill, and worst of all, men who can’t shut up about their mothers. But finally, she hits the jackpot.

Her new boyfriend is utterly perfect. He’s charming, handsome, and works as a doctor at a local hospital. Sydney is swept off her feet.

Then the brutal murder of a young woman―the latest in a string of deaths across the coast―confounds police. The primary suspect? A mystery man who dates his victims before he kills them.

Sydney should feel safe. After all, she is dating the guy of her dreams. But she can’t shake her own suspicions that the perfect man may not be as perfect as he seems. Because someone is watching her every move, and if she doesn’t get to the truth, she’ll be the killer’s next victim…

***

Bold in original, and I do think that’s overdoing it. Regardless, though I personally found the opening engaging, as I say, I don’t like the sound of the actual story. I’m not crazy about Sydney — just based on this description — and I’m not keen on what looks to be an entire novel-length inability to decide whether she’s dating a serial killer. I am not, of course, looking over her shoulder as she makes decisions. But if she suspects her new boyfriend could be the serial killer AND she knows someone is watching her every move, then this sounds like a great time to say, “Hey, it’s been fun, I’m going to have to go take care of my aged mother in Montana for six months, I sure hope I’ll see you again when I get back.” Then leave town and see what happens. Does the boyfriend let you go? If not, that’s pretty suggestive.

Well, in the story, perhaps it makes sense that Sydney goes into a is-he-or-isn’t-he vacillation.

4.4 stars, by the way, nearly 38,000 ratings on Amazon. Wow, almost 100,000 ratings on Amazon. Came out at the beginning of the month. #1 in all its categories and in the Kindle store overall. A definite phenomenon. That is a killer first page (pun mostly intended).

Here is an interesting comment from a review:

One of the strengths of The Boyfriend is its pacing. McFadden keeps the story moving at a breakneck speed, with short chapters that make the book easy to binge-read. Each chapter ends with a small cliffhanger, urging readers to keep turning the pages to find out what happens next. The suspense builds steadily, and just when you think you’ve figured it out, McFadden throws in a twist that changes everything.

I point this out because a novel like this may be worth reading to think about the structural features that make a book a page-turner.

Also, fine, I admit I’m curious about the twist. Is Sydney herself the killer? That seems unlikely in this setup, but, I mean, maybe? Does Sydney’s perfect boyfriend turn out to be perfect after all, and the killer is someone else? I would probably prefer that, depending on exactly how the author worked it out. Regardless, not picking this one up because psychological thrillers aren’t generally something I seek out. But if any of you have read it and give it a thumbs up, I might change my mind …

Please Feel Free to Share:

The post Would you turn the page? appeared first on Rachel Neumeier.