Review: My dead friend Sarah - Rosch

Title: My dead friend Sarah

Author: Peter Rosch

Pages: 288

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Rating:    

Plot:

Mere months into recovery, Max, an alcoholic with twisted control issues, meets Sarah - the same woman that for years he's habitually dreamt will die after a botched abduction. "Doing the next right thing", a popular AA phrase he's picked up in the rooms, means befriending Sarah long enough to warn her and hope she takes him seriously. But when Sarah fells in love with Max, his newly sober thinking drives him to choose his overly devoted wife, and abandons Sarah - even when it condemns her to death. When Sarah goes missing, the NYPD suspects Max's dream may have been a prpe-crime confession. The truth, all of it, lurks inside of Max, but only by drinking again does he recapture the nerve and clarity vital to free his wife, sponsor, and himself from a life imprisoned by lies.

My thought:

When I saw the cover of this book, I was so "Oh my god, that's something interesting!".. Then I read the plot, and found it so charming I asked for the book on Netgalley. I have to be honest: if it wasn't for NetGalley, I wouldn't have finished it. Or maybe it would have asked for too much time.

Problem is that everything is spoilered in the plot: there isn't much more in the book to entartain the reader.. The idea about dreaming that a girl was going to be kidnapped and killed and then actually meeting her is challenging, no doubt about that! But then? Reading the book and finding almost nothing.. It's appalling. The story starts in medias res when Sarah is nowhere to be found. We follow both Max and Sarah in first person, but there are two big problems: they are unreliable tellers because they can't help themslves in being liars and they tell the story without any respect to logic, ratio and temporal factors.

I quite enjoyed the first part, maybe because I was still hoping that something was going to happen.. Second part? So boring I risked to fall asleep many times.

I did and did not like the way the story is written: sometimes I found it interesting, other way, quite disturbing.

Plus, Max and Sarah are strange characters. I didn't feel anything towards them ans more often then not, I found them not so enjoyable!

I liked Rachel, a strong woman who doesn't want to leave his husband even if he's an alcoholic, a violent man who has cheated on her and who is an unmanageable liar..

I liked (till it began the real subject of the book) the fact that alcoholism is threated without shame but in plain sight! Then Rosch started to tell us about every single AA's encounter.. And I became sleepy!