Wednesday 26 June 2013

You Don't Want To Know by Lisa Jackson


Two years after her two-year old son Noah has gone missing, Ava still sees visions of her son and hears his voice calling her. After her son disappeared, Ava became suicidal and lost her mental balance leading to a stint at the asylum. Ava is still taking medicines under psychiatric care. Ava is super rich and owns an island, and lives with her husband and an assortment of relatives in her Island home. She doesn't trust anybody, including her husband. Is it the medicines or her condition that is causing this paranoia and hallucinations? Or is somebody setting her up, trying to push her off the edge? If it is somebody making her crazy, who is it? Is it her husband who is seeing the psychologist in the sly? Or is it her wheel-chair bound cousin Jewel-Anne, who considers her the reason for her condition? Or is it her young cousin Jacob, who would love a slice of her wealth? Who is doing this to her? Or has she just lost it? Is there anybody she can trust? Why is the new cowboy rancher Austin Dern following her everywhere?

There are other questions too. Did it all start with her son's dissaapperance or much before that at her brother's death? The Island also was the home of a high security mental institution housing criminals who had committed multiple murders. After one of the murderers managed to escape, the institution was closed. Was the murderer responsible for her son's disappearance? What happened to her son? Is it better not to know? Are some truths better not known?

The island location works very well. But I feel some passages repetitive. I read something turn the page the same thing is repeated often wondering if I am reading the same page over and over again. It happens quite a few times.  A minor quibble in an overall engaging read. There are quite a lot of twists and turns in the last few pages. What looks like a straightforward mystery becomes a complex one with lots of twists and turns, you think it is over the mystery is solved, and then there is something else, and then something else all in the last few pages. A bit too long but I love my twists and turns and surprises!

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