I Let You Go

They reach the quiet street where home lies just around the corner, its seductive warmth a welcome thought. Secure in the environs of her own neighborhood, she lets go of his hand to push away the strands of wet hair from her eyes, laughing at the cascade of droplets it causes.

I Let You Go has been a huge hit – The blockbuster thriller of summer 2016! – and other than the blurbs on the cover that promised me a “killer twist”, I knew nothing at all about this book's premise. I started reading it thinking, “Well, _____ is probably going to happen or ______ will, and that would be dumb”, but when the twist does happen, paving the way for Part Two, I have to admit that I never saw it coming. I liked the twist, it felt earned and not a cheat, but that one element was the best part of the entire book: everything that comes before is slow and schmaltzy, and everything after provokes eye-rolling in its efforts to draw out the drama and add on twists right up to the final scene; all while hosting some of the poorest drawn characters in the most unbelievable of relationships that I've ever read. I understand that the author, Clare Mackintosh, spent twelve years as a police detective (which would certainly qualify her as an expert on the investigative parts of this book), but despite her experience writing for various magazines, that doesn't quite make her a novelist: more than anything, this book felt amateurish and underdeveloped. Thus ends my spoiler-free synopsis; beware beyond (because it's really better to go into this book cold and I'm not trying to spoil anyone's fun; I was able to hide behind spoiler tags on Goodreads, but no such luck here).

I want to fix an image of him in my head, but all I can see when I close my eyes is his body, still and lifeless in my arms. I let him go, and I will never forgive myself for that.

Like I said, I knew nothing about I Let You Go going in, so I was properly shocked by the preface: a rainy day, a slipped hand, a fatal hit-and-run. Then begins the police investigation, and as Mackintosh was a detective, I'm prepared to believe that it would happen just as written: and as the timeline jumps months at a go, it's believable that at first there's all resources of the department focussed on this one case, then a gradual dwindling as other cases come up, and then, a year later, the Chief wanting the case shelved so the public isn't constantly reminded of the unsolved hit-and-run. There's plenty of the procedure and politics of a police force in these sections, and although Ray concedes that this stuff can be dull (as he says, there's a reason why television shows don't include all the boring paperwork and meetings), I'll concede that it's Macintosh's particular area of expertise and understandable for her to include at length. What did bother me in these sections were the unnecessarily messy relationships: the middle-aged Detective Inspector Ray is attracted to his fresh young colleague Kate, while his long-suffering wife Mags – a former cop herself who left the force to become a stay-at-home Mom – resents the long hours her husband spends on the case (as if a former cop and mother wouldn't be the most sympathetic of spouses in this situation) while she's stuck dealing with their teenaged son's increasing delinquency. (One of my early thoughts about the twist was that the son was the driver of the car and that's why it left the scene and why he was increasingly bonkers. I was happy when the twist wasn't that obvious, but when it turns out he's just another juvenile delinquent, and his devoted mother insists on sharing the blame for not preventing it, it felt like dumb drama for its own sake; this has nothing to do with anything. Ray kissing Kate also had nothing to do with anything; just more dumb drama for its own dumb sake.)  It also doesn't look too good for the department when some twists happen near the end of the book that expose some shoddy police work. Would they honestly never have learned Jenna's true last name? Could a case have proceeded against her in court under the wrong name?

You must remember that he was a boy. That he had a mother. And that her heart is breaking.

In an alternating storyline, we meet Jenna: a mother so traumatised from the accident and the loss of her son that she runs away from her life in Bristol, ending up in a remote cottage on the Welsh coast. These sections were very chic-lit, with Jenna rediscovering her self-worth by taking up photography, and when she meets the handsome veterinarian Patrick, she opens herself to love. But then the twist happens and everything changes. And then relationships get more tangled as more characters are added from Jenna's history. And then, as her history is filled in up to the point of the accident itself, the twists are piled up one upon the other until I didn't believe a word of what I was reading. (Jacob was Ian's son and he killed him on purpose so Jenna, who he was about to give the beating of her life, wouldn't find out about him and leave? Uh huh.) And just a word about the shifting point of view: during the investigation, the story is told from a semi-omniscient third person POV, focussing on Ray's inner thoughts; this works fine. In the Jenna sections, POV shifts to her first person perspective; this also works fine, I suppose, because her sections, being chic-litty, are more personal. And then when Ian has his few sections, it's first person from his POV, but he always refers to Jenna in the second person, as “you” (and does that mean it's Ian talking in the title, "I let you go"?). It's not that I was confused by the ever shifting points of view, but it felt so deliberate and inorganic that the device really didn't serve the story well; the effort thoroughly undermines whatever art Mackintosh was striving for.

And that's my main complaint: I Let You Go doesn't rise to the level of art. It's a decent story with a “killer twist” that peters out from there. I didn't believe the actions or motivations of any of the characters (I won't even get into Evie staying away from her sister for five years after making the connections she did; waiting those five years before dropping the bomb about their father, sigh), and every relationship was complicated by factors that didn't relate to the storyline. Every twist after the initial one was increasingly predictable and unbelievable until I was guessing what was going to happen, and then annoyed when I was right. This is the kind of book that I'm happy to have read (so I'm in the know with what everyone is reading), but regretted most every minute I spent with it. My gut says this is a two or two and a half star book, but I'm going to round up to three for that one twist.