Kristie's Craziness

After a long pause, I’ve decided to start working my way through my summer reading list. I’ve been slacking because of all the packing, (I didn’t intend to rhyme) but with my sciatic pain still knocking me down intermittently I figure a good book will provide a distraction. The first book on my list is The Engagement.

Amazon Description:

You thought you had escaped him. Until he proposed to your daughter. 

‘There’s someone I want you to meet,’ Belle says, as a man draws up to her side. He’s tall with dark hair and stubble on his square jaw. He’s not exactly smiling, but the corner of his mouth curls upwards as he slides his hand around my daughter’s waist. 

I grab my husband’s arm to steady myself, as the room spins around me.

I stare into the man’s eyes – jet black. Nothing and everything hidden behind them.

Fear prickles my skin as I remember what he did.

How I only just escaped.

All the lies I’ve had to tell since.

‘I want you to meet Jack,’ Belle says, brimming with excitement. ‘He’s my fiancé.’ She rests her head on his shoulder. ‘Isn’t it exciting? We’re engaged!’

Fear hammers in my chest. I have to stop this.

My daughter’s life is in danger, and it’s all because of me…

My Opinion:

From the first chapter, something feels off in Hannah’s story. She claims to be over cautious because of her past, but allowed her daughter to travel in France for 2 months and never once checked in with her host family. Then Belle comes home late and announces that she is engaged to a man twice her age; a man Hannah knows is lying about his identity. Instead of forming a plan, going to the cops, or warning her daughter and family, she skirts around town, semi-investigating the man’s stories and digging herself deeper into her past. It’s hard to feel bad for her when she keeps creating more trouble and not using sound logic.

All in all, I really enjoyed the story line. The flashbacks between the present and the past made the initial plot twist foreseeable, but the second one… Let’s just say it made me look at the previous events differently.

Rating: 4/5

Quotes:

(pg 123) Sometimes people say things that we want to believe in order to… well, to get what they want.

(pg 315) Trauma is… well, it’s devastating. It affects every part of your life and how you trust and how you relate to others or make decisions. It’s not always true that it makes you stronger. In fact, it can have the opposite effect. But what it does do is make you consider things more carefully, so you don’t repeat past patterns. The irony is that if you ignore it, the patterns repeat anyway.

Just something to think about.

Kristie