The premise of this book is what initially drew me in. A young couple living in London, Mike and V (short for Verity meaning truth **eyeroll**), play a game called the Crave. V will go and stand at a bar with Mike watching from far away. When V gets approached by a man, Mike swoops in and “saves” her by pulling the whole “what are you doing with my girlfriend” routine. Mike moves to the US to make some money and when he returns V is engaged to someone else. Mike thinks this is some elaborate version of the Crave, but is it?
**SPOILERS BELOW**
See? The setup has so much potential! Unfortunately, it falls hopelessly flat. I really don’t want to spoil the whole book but in order to review it properly I feel I have to describe some of the plot. So, if you do want to read this book spoiler-free, now is when I would stop.
I came into this book thinking that it would be a thriller about whether or not V is actually organizing an incredibly elaborate Crave. Instead, it starts as a character study of a dime-store Joe Goldberg and ends with an abrupt about-face into a very thinly veiled misandrous tirade. None of which is thrilling in the least.
The book is written from Mikes perspective. Mike loves V. Like A LOT. The book makes this painfully apparent by stating this over and over again until you want to scream at the book to get on with it. I swear Mike spends most of the book just thinking about V and getting drunk in his house and listening to Oasis. V and Mike barely interact at all. I kept waiting for something borderline interesting to happen which it didn’t until I was 80% of the way through the book. Mike shows up at V’s place while her now-husband Angus is out of town. She tells him basically point blank that it all was a part of the Crave. Mike tells Angus this. At this point, Mike accidentally murders V’s partner after they get in a fight. Mike and V are found holding each other by the police. I thought, erroneously, the book would pick up because murder always livens things up right?
BUT it honestly just slowed down even more. V takes it all back when she and Mike go to trial for his murder and says she only said what she did about the game because she was scared of what Mike would do to her. Which would make complete sense if this was real life. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve lied to a man to get out of a sticky situation. Except this isn’t real life and I kept expecting and hoping for just even a glimpse from V that Mike wasn’t delusional. A shared smile. A wink. A vague letter. Or just her flat out stating that she had been using him but it all went just a bit too far. ANYTHING to make things a little bit more juicy rather than boring and sad. But, the book goes on for another twenty pages confirming that everything was just in Mike’s head and adding nothing new except for the sprinkle of man-hating by V’s lawyer. I then remembered that V’s stupid real name is Verity and the author was really hitting us over the head with the fact that she was telling the TRUTH **double eyerolI** I began to realize that the author was trying to teach the audience a lesson. A lesson that it was just throwing at us in the last few pages. Believe women because men feel entitled to them regardless of how many times they say no. It honestly feels so shoe-horned at the end that I thought maybe it was just to make the ending a bit spicier and of-the-moment. However, it’s clear that that was not the author’s intention as she states in the acknowledgements that the book was written in a fit of “male-centered” anger. Yikes.
The book fails to use Mike and V’s story as a powerful feminist message. It is very evident that, in this case, Mike isn’t suffering from white male privilege. He is legitimately mentally ill as a result of his abusive upbringing. So, using him as a symbol of a typical man just doesn’t work and really undermines her argument.
I want to be clear that stories about believing women are important. I just really didn’t like this book’s story or message.
Dinosaurs and Blueberries 