Best Day Ever

by Kaira Rouda

[Briana @ Pages Unbound]

I’m not usually a reader of thrillers, but I give them a chance if one happens to come my way, but I have to admit that I have yet to be “thrilled.”  Best Day Ever is no exception; sure, it’s a bit creepy that it’s narrated by an abusive husband, but pretty much all the twists and the ending were predictable to me, which meant the psychology was really the only thing left of interest.

Yet I have reservations about that, too.  The author states in a note that she’s intrigued by unreliable narrators, so she was excited to write from the point of view of a guy who tells readers his story while leaving out pertinent information that might make him look bad.  After all, from his perspective, he’s not a villain; he’s a genius, and everything he does to other people is simply something that they deserve.  However, while I’m sure the author did her research into how the minds of people like her narrator work, a lot of it felt contrived to me.  It felt a bit like a woman’s interpretation of how an abusive man would think, and sometimes the detail was so overwhelming that it felt more like information the author was giving rather than something that a person would actually think to themselves.

The other characters are, of course, a bit bland, since the narrator’s whole perspective is that he’s the smart, charming, worthy one, and other people are just background noise who owe him things and deserve punishment when they don’t capitulate.  They’re not really people in his mind, which makes them not really people in the book.  One can see some sparks of life and cleverness in his wife, which is interesting and adds a bit of spice to the story.

Basically, I was underwhelmed.  Best Day Ever puts readers into the mind of a jerk, but that’s all it did for me.  I didn’t find him compelling, and of course reading about his abuse is not exactly what one would call “enjoyable.”  I wasn’t surprised by any of the turns the plot took, so this book kind of just was for me.  It’s fine, but I won’t be recommending it to others.