Review: Somebody I Used to Know by David Bell

Book: Somebody I Used to Know

Author: David Bell

Pages: 432 pages

I read it on: My Kindle

I read it in: 5-6 hours

Plot Summary: When Nick Hansen sees the young woman at the grocery store, his heart stops. She is the spitting image of his college girlfriend, Marissa Minor, who died in a campus house fire twenty years earlier. But when Nick tries to speak to her, she acts skittish and rushes off.

The next morning the police arrive at Nick’s house and show him a photo of the woman from the store. She’s been found dead, murdered in a local motel, with Nick’s name and address on a piece of paper in her pocket.

Convinced there's a connection between the two women, Nick enlists the help of his college friend Laurel Davidson to investigate the events leading up to the night of Marissa’s death. But the young woman’s murder is only the beginning...and the truths Nick uncovers may make him wish he never doubted the lies.

What I Liked: Here is the usual bullet-point list:

• The premise of the book seemed interesting- a doppelganger of a dead, much-loved girlfriend, who ends up murdered the next day with the protagonist as the main suspect. What is not to like?

• There are a couple of good mysteries in this story- first, a fire in a campus house twenty years ago, the same one that killed Nick's girlfriend Marissa. Was that fire really an accident? Second, the mystery lookalike girl, the one who turned up dead. Was she related to Marissa? Why was Nick's name and address found in her pocket? 

• The book starts off well, we launch slowly into the mystery and Nick and his cop-turned-PI-friend Laurel go about investigating the death of the unknown young girl and also start looking into the fire from over 20 years ago.  

• The author did a good job of handing out one clue after another at a swift pace. I hate when books don't give you clues and pieces of the puzzle throughout and wait till the end to explain everything. This book was really good with giving one clue after another. 

• The resolution of the mysteries was quite decent. We (my sister and I buddy-read this book) had guessed certain aspects of it and there was an additional nice twist, which was good too. 

What I Didn't Like: Here you go:

• Nick, the protagonist, seemed really needy and kind of pathetic. It was impossible to relate to or connect with him. Come on, who mourns for an ex for twenty years?! He seems very clingy and needy and in the beginning he does seem like he is a viable suspect for the murder of Emily (the young woman who looked like Nick's college sweetheart). He seems very isolated, stuck in a low-paying job and like someone who has very few friends. Later on in the book, we find out that he is very well-regarded and has loads of friends and he, actually, loves his job. So, what was the point of using him as some sort of red herring in the beginning?! If I can't connect with the protagonist, then I don't end up rooting for him/her.. and that's exactly what happened in this book.  

• None of the other characters in this book were likable, except, maybe, perhaps, Laurel (Nick's friend who helps him investigate). Marissa herself seems extremely self-centered and when you find out what happened to her, you will despise her even more! There was hardly any character building for any of the characters that randomly walk in and out of the narrative. So, there's that, another thing that I didn't like about the book. 

• The writing was pretty low quality. It was very basic, not that it was awful or grammatically incorrect, but it was nothing to write home about. Also, the writing style was somewhat disjointed and choppy, which in turn made the narrative very choppy as well. 

• There are a few things from a legal perspective that don't tie up neatly at the end of this book. The reason Marissa broke up with Nick and wanted to drop out of college just before she died was something pretty serious and something for which there is no statute of limitations. So, umm, I can't say more than that without completely ruining this book, but let's just say that the way the book ended, legally, it would not end that way at all. 

Rating: 2.5/5