This Audible Orginal is only 144 minutes long but I quit after the first hour, at the end of the first chapter because the set up was transparent, the tone was exploitative and, instead of being concerned with the welfare of the main character, I found myself moving from being impatient with her to angry at her. I decided life was too short to spend more time on this.
I picked up 'The Getaway' because it was free from Audible and because I'd heard good things about "The Wife Between Us" from these two writers and thought I could use this novella to sample their work.
When I was a third of the way in to the novella, I was unimpressed but still ready to listen. the storytelling was competent, the tone was creepy and laced with latent threat but I was struggling to believe in or care about the main character.
She was too conveniently tragic. She was also incredibly trusting. She was supposed to bright (straight-A-student, political activist) but she proved remarkably open to psychobabble of the be-the-best-teapot-you-can-be kind and saw a charismatic man where I saw a predatory charmer.
By the end of the first chapter, a second woman was in danger and asks our heroine for help. Her first instinctive response? To assume the second woman is lying to want to run to the predatory male to discuss what could have happened to this woman to make her exhibit this behaviour.
At that point, I was done. I didn't care what happened to this woman and my disbelief could no longer be suspended.
Maybe I'm being too harsh. Maybe I should be treating this a sort of literary fairground ride, something I'm supposed to enjoy even though I know the terror is manufactured?
Maybe.
Except, I hate fairground rides.
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