The Other Side of Night - Adam Hamdy - ★★★★

AUTHOR: Adam Hamdy

GENRE: Literary Fiction

PUBLICATION DATE: September 15, 2022

RATING: 4 stars

In a Nutshell: Can’t reveal much without spoiling it, so all I’ll say here is: it takes a long while to get going but the ending is worth it. Better suited to those who prefer character-driven reads and aren’t fussy about genres. I am an outlier once again, but on the positive side – Woohoo!!!

Plot Preview:

Harriet Kealty, a police officer, has just been suspended. As she tries to clear her name, she discovers a second-hand book with an inscription: “Help me, he’s trying to kill me.” Backtracking to the last person who borrowed the book from the library, Harriet discovers that Elizabeth Asha, the woman who possibly wrote the note, died a few months ago, followed soon after by her husband David, who jumped off the cliffs, leaving behind their six-year-old son Elliott. Harriet feels compelled to check on Elliott, when she discovers, to her great surprise, that his new guardian is Ben Elmys, the love of Harriet’s life who broke up with her after just three dates. Is this all just a coincidence? But there are no coincidences in police work, right?

Ben was just a colleague of the Ashas. Why is he the guardian of their son? Why did David jump off the cliff when he knew there was no one to look after his little boy? Why did Elizabeth write the note? As Harriet scrambles to find the truth, she realises a horrifying possibility: Ben Elmys might be a murderer. Can she leave her one-sided feelings for him aside and dig out the truth?

PSA: Go in blind!

Bookish Yays:

🔥 As you might have guessed from the synopsis, Harriet is the key character of this book. But the story comes to us…. Now this is going to be a surprise… in David Asha’s perspective! It takes ages to understand how and where from and why and when David is narrating this tale. I enjoyed the unusual path taken as well as the discovery of the truth.

🔥 As David’s narration is the frame story, the plot gets a lot of structure and support. David uses various resources such as court rulings, newspaper articles, Harriet’s journal, as well as his own memories to tell us the truth sequentially, even if the characters in that particular timepoint don’t know yet what happened. His own interludes add to the depth of the storyline.

🔥 A character-driven story always needs complex characters, who might not be all good or all bad but are people you want to know more about. The key characters all fit this requirement. They aren’t likeable but they are realistic.

🔥 I am not going to utter anything abut the storyline beyond what I have said above. But just know, it goes much beyond an ordinary murder investigation. I can’t remember the last time I was caught so unawares by the direction taken by a story.

🔥 There are some excellent quotable quotes herein.

🔥 Didn’t expect to find myself thinking about free will vs. determinism while reading this. Read the book to know why. Loved this aspect!

Bookish Mixed Bags:

🎆 The pace is much hampered by philosophical rambling from David. To be fair, the reason for his musings becomes clear later and even makes sense at the end. But the problem is me. I have an allergy against philosophy: even a few sentences of it makes me break into eyerolls and yawns.

🎆 The story changes direction in the final quarter, a transition so drastic that the publisher had to add a special note to ARC reviewers about not leaking any spoiler in the review. Your enjoyment of the book will depend heavily on what you think of this transition. It worked excellently for me, though it did leave me with a few minor questions as well.

🎆 You do require to engage in suspension of disbelief but I guess that’s a taken for most contemporary thrillers anyway. Some of the reveals are too big to digest immediately, but many of them make sense in the story flow. Better if you just go with the flow.

I confess, the low rating on Goodreads didn’t exactly motivate me to get to this book soon. But now that I have read it, I understand why so many readers had trouble with it. The plotline needs a lot of patience. Unlike typical mystery stories, this is a slowburn, and is also character-driven. So perhaps, it would help to go into it with the right approach. Don’t read it as a mystery or crime thriller because these would automatically make you expect a faster tempo and regular twists/surprises. Rather, treat it as a literary fiction or a character-oriented drama. FWIW, it is officially promoted as ‘general fiction’.

Definitely recommended, but not to all readers. This is a niche audience book, and might work better for those who enjoy character-driven storylines and aren’t constricted by genre preferences. It’s not for those who like insta-everything. I am enjoying being on the positive side of Outlier Island for a change; rarely am I on ‘the other side of night’. 😉

Pro tip: Read the preface again once you have completed the whole story. You will discover greater meaning in it, especially in its very first sentence. Reading it the second time around is like a light-bulb-turned-on-above-head moment! 

My thanks to Pan Macmillan and NetGalley for the DRC of “The Other Side of Night”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.