My rating: 4 of 5 stars
“Every child gets a good mother, but not every mother gets a good child.”
----Amit Kalantri, an Indian author
Jessica Treadway, an American author, pens a compelling as well as heart-wrenching tale of a mother and a daughter in her new psychological thriller, Lacy Eye that accounts the story of a family where the husband and the wife were brutally beaten on their bed, due to which the husband died whereas the wife suffered memory loss and physical injuries unfortunately three years later, the man who did this to them is seeking an appeal to the court and that wife must put all her energy to try to remember that horrific life. And surprisingly this man was the wife's daughter's boyfriend.
Synopsis:
Hanna Schutt never suspected that her younger daughter's happiness would lead to her husband's death and the destruction of their family. When Dawn brings her new boyfriend home from college for a visit, her parents and sister try to hide their doubts because they're glad that Dawn - always an awkward child - appears to have grown into a confident, mature young woman in her relationship with Rud. But when Hanna and her husband, Joe, are beaten savagely in their bed, Rud becomes the chief suspect and stands trial for Joe's murder.
Claiming her boyfriend's innocence, Dawn estranges herself from her mother, who survived the attack with serious injuries and impaired memory. When Rud wins an appeal and Dawn returns to the family home saying she wants to support her mother, Hanna decides to try to remember details of that traumatic night so she can testify to keep her husband's murderer in jail, never guessing that the process might cause her to question everything she thought she knew about her daughter.
Hanna and Joe are a married couple with two daughters- Iris and Dawn. Iris has always been a popular and self-confident woman all her life, whereas Dawn has always been meek and socially awkward with no friends and has forever lived in the shadows of her elder sister- Iris, so when Dawn invites her boyfriend Rud to her family home, her parents were glad that she finally met someone. Unfortunately, the night turned out to be uneventful for Hanna and Joe as they were brutally beaten. Joe died because of his severe injuries whereas Hanna survived her injuries that left her with both mental and physical scars. Dawn and Rud are soon accused of the attack, following which they were taken into custody. Dawn survived the sentence to prison life, whereas her boyfriend couldn't.
Now three years later, Hanna who is now living with her daughters, is trying hard to remember that horrific night with all her strength so that the appeal that Rud has seek to the court gets refused, in order to punish for his deeds. Whereas Dawn is adamant on her opinion that Rud is innocent thus creating a bridge between the Hanna and herself and also between Iris and herself.
The writing quality is very strong and the mystery unreels in fragments, not too revealing or not too concealing. The pacing is very fast and the story flows smoothly even though from Hanna's POV it is difficult to get a clear view of the memories of the past that gives a definition to every member of the family, since she is suffering from memory loss due to the attack. The mystery challenged as well as intrigued me all through out the book, more than the mystery, it's unraveling answers threw me off the edges. Seems like the author knows how to untangle a messy knot slowly and teasingly with just bits and pieces.
This is a character-driven psycho-thriller, thus the strongest factor of this book is it's characters not the plot or the mystery and that the author have done it brilliantly. The author has a deep psychological grip on her characters, who are portrayed as multifaceted, flawed and sympathetic human beings, all achingly vulnerable, all wracked by fear and need and guilt. And the characters are portrayed strikingly well mixed with their flaws and shortcomings, anger, hatred, insecurities.
There is an undercurrent of mother-daughter relationship insecurities as well as siblings rivalry. Not only the mystery is challenging but so are the fractured relationships. From Hanna's POV, it is evident that she has forever preferred her younger daughter, Dawn than her elder one, Iris, that leads to yet another insecurity between the sisters. Hanna's confusing mind made me to have an open mind on the perspective of the whole situation. Hanna feels Dawn's involvement in the beat up is incorrect as well as innocent whereas Iris and rest of the cast of characters feels just the opposite. Thus a shifting perspective made the story even more alluring with the complexities and the confusion lurking in the air of the family home. of Hanna. Also it questioned me with Hanna's parenting style with her daughters, the way one teats or prioritizes one daughter over another, whether a bad childhood can affect someone to take a drastic step like Dawn against her parents. In short, the book questions the society with it's faults that silently kills the balanced psychology of a human being.
The mystery of whodunnit and figuring out a child's involvement to her parents' brutal attack kept me engaged till the very end and the way the author have swimmed into the depths of the memories and past of each and every characters that I couldn't stop turning the pages until the very end.
Verdict: Psychological thriller and crime fiction lovers will love this book.
Courtesy: Thanks to the publishers for giving me an opportunity to read and review the book.
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