The Inmate

This book was okay and I enjoyed it in so far as that it was a quick and easy read that was unpredictable and kept me guessing, but it wasn't great and I'm not sure I'd go out of my way to recommend it. Here's why:

The entire story hinges on the protagonist, Brooke, making the absolute, most stupid choices possible at every turn in the book. She really takes naïveté to the next level; beyond what is reasonable, in my opinion. I don't feel any sensible, rational person who went through what she did would reasonably make most of the decisions that underpinned the premise of this story. You can justify the odd irrational or stupid decision here and there, we all make poor choices after all, but it was just every single one in this novel, almost to the point of insulting the readers' intelligence.

For the story to be enjoyable, you also have to overlook the absolute incompetence of the police and justice systems and how they operate in this book. While, as a writer, you're probably on stronger ground relying on flaws here, it seems justice in this book is largely meted out to whoever our dear protagonist feels is guilty du jour as opposed to proper police investigative work and reliable testimony in court. You also have to go along with the premise that, after a high profile trial, the protagonist is able to get a job putting her in a position of medical responsibility over a person she had such a history with and who attempted to murder her. I feel this would certainly come up in a background check as a conflict of interest, and even if it did not why would you even be willing to put yourself in a position where you'd likely see the man who tried to kill you again? The attempt to explain away why it was "impossible" for her to get other nursing jobs was also weak. Even if it worked, if it had been me, I'd rather have taken a job outside of nursing for awhile rather than work at that exact prison.

Even if you're willing to overlook these things as a reader for the sake of the story, the third hurdle is the underpinning motives which led to those ultimately responsible for the murders carrying them out. It was extremely hard to see the strength of the motives that led to what went down in that farmhouse that night. This was a stretch too far for me where the author clearly tried to come out of left field with a twist, at the expense of rationale and believably.

How everything was resolved was also super convenient and relied on a string of improbable and increasingly unlikely coincidences, some bordering on stupidity.

Oh and on top of all of this, you also have to overlook the fact that we're suppose to believe that Brooke's kid was actually bullied for being a "bastard" and being born out of wedlock. In modern day Queens, NY. Yes, the author actually seems to think this is why kids are bullied these days.

Overall if you're willing to shut your brain off and overlook a LOT of things, you may get entertained by this book purely on the basis of it being difficult to pin down where the author's going with it right up until the end. I just largely wasn't buying what the author was attempting to sell us, which is unfortunately really as I was excited for the premise and setting. What could have been a dark, gritty, prison-based thriller turned out to be something much weaker than I had desired.