Review: For Your Own Good

For Your Own Good by Samantha Downing
My rating: 3 of 5 stars



View all my reviews

**spoiler alert** As a teacher, I’m always intrigued by novels set in an academic environment. The book blurb for this convinced me it was a must read. It wasn’t.

Teddy is a private school teacher, at the onset presented as an “odd bird”. He is introspective enough to realize he must maintain a specific persona at work (one of the consummate professional educator, working to better the lives of his students). On the other hand, he is a raging psychopath, navigating his own little world though a lens of misguided and narcissistic justifications conjured to assuage his periodic guilt. As he plods ahead, annihilating everyone in his path, his detached manner eventually becomes rather tedious. In fact, his lengthy reign as a self-identified judgy grim reaper is so clinical that it alienated me as a reader. We are told about most of the murders after the fact and without ever being witnesses to the events themselves. In lieu of taking the reader into the horror of Teddy’s actions, we are instead treated to myriad mundane details about Teddy’s idiosyncrasies: he drinks milk only out of bottles, he is overly attached to his “teacher of the year” plaque, and he maintains a quasi-lab in his basement where he cooks up all manner of poisons. The sometimes laser-like focus on Teddy’s self-absorbed quirks and motivations is ringed-around-the-edges with dark humor, but it’s not blatant enough to know if it’s intentional or just a cynical interpretation. 

Overall, a strange, detached read. 

Review: The Maidens

The Maidens by Alex Michaelides
My rating: 3 of 5 stars



View all my reviews

Review

I was surprised to see this make it to the “best of” finalists in the mystery genre for 2021. Granted, it’s been a barren year in terms of blockbusters, but there are so many contenders more worthy of the honor. Alex Michaelides begins with a storyline created, it would appear, as a way to showcase his extensive knowledge of Greek tragedy through contrived allusions. Unfortunately, while he may be well-schooled re: the “classics” (by both the general and conventional definitions), he fails to transfer that to a plot that is either accessible or engaging. For those familiar with the Greek literature referenced, the book is monotonous and moves at a snail’s pace. For those without that background, the whole thing reads as an exercise in author arrogance. From Fosco to Mariana, Fred to Zoe, each character lays flat on the page, never emerging as personalities worthy of a read. They behave in ways that directly contradict the personas initially crafted, giving the reader little chance to become invested in any of them before they change direction. They also fumble about in ridiculous scenarios, clearly designed to be red herrings that, well….just aren’t. Anyone who has read myriad examples of the genre will have the murderer pegged in short shrift, making the entire book an exercise in futility.  In the end, I was left with the impression that the author had written what he had hoped to be a high brow mystery that ended up as little more than a dime store paperback. Was it the worst of the year? Certainly not. It was also far from even the mediocre.