The Other Side of the Door by Nicci French
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
When Bonnie Graham’s friend asks her to perform at her wedding at the end of the summer, she readily accepts.
All she has to do is put a band together. How hard can it be?
Even though she is currently a music teacher, Bonnie has been on the music scene for a long time and knows a lot of people.
Thus, she is able to hastily assemble a band with members including her ex-boyfriend, Amos, and her best friend, Sonia.
As the summer wears on and they spend more time together prepping for the show, tensions begin to rise and relationships become strained.
When Bonnie finds the body of her lover, and fellow band member, Hayden, dead, lying in his apartment in a pool of his own blood, she thinks she knows what happened.
She then hatches a plan to try to protect the killer, but does she really know who that is?
Alternating between past and present perspectives, with Bonnie as the main protagonist, the truth behind Hayden’s life, death and their relationship is revealed.
I feel almost exactly the same upon finishing this, as I did after Lisa Jewell’s, The Family Upstairs.
In short, underwhelmed.
I thought that I would really like this, as I frequently enjoy stories focused on music, or musicians. However, this was just too slow of a burn.
With this being said, I also appreciate a slow burn, but the final payoff needs to be worth it and for me, this just wasn’t.
The back-and-forth felt extremely chaotic to me. I generally prefer an alternating timeline, but it has to be seamless and here I found myself forgetting which time I was in.
Additionally, I didn’t find the relationships and corresponding drama to be particularly believable.
At the end of the day, while there were some glimmers of a solid story under all the chatter, this one just did not work for me.
It may work for you though, so do not let my opinion sway you from picking it up. If the synopsis sounds interesting, give it a go! There’s a Reader for every book!
Thank you so much to the publisher, William Morrow Paperbacks, for providing me with a copy to read and review.
Even though this one didn’t quite work for me, I would definitely be willing to pick up more work from this author!