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Monday, May 18, 2020

You Can't Catch Me by Catherine McKenzie

Catherine McKenzie has the ability to generate anxiety in the reader, and her latest novel continues the trend.  The anxiety is often a result of fear that the main character has taken a road that will end in disaster.  You may like and sympathize with the protagonist, but the apprehension generated by her behavior just keeps building.

You Can't Catch Me has two principal threads--one in the present and one in the past.  

from description:  After being fired from her investigative journalism job for plagiarism, Jessica Williams is looking for a break from the constant press coverage. She decides to escape for a week to a resort in Mexico boasting no connections to the outside world. While waiting at the airport for her flight, she encounters a woman with the exact same name, who she dubs Jessica Two. Drawn together by the coincidence, they play a game of twenty questions to see what other similarities they share, and exchange contact information.

The game of twenty questions is clever.  "Jessica Two's" game has elicited answers to questions that will enable her to Jessica Williams' bank account.  Our Jessica on finding her recent settlement money gone, sets out to find "Jessica Two."

The connection to the past is our Jessica's having been raised in a cult which she escaped when she was eighteen.  These sections alternate with the present search for "Jessica Two."

You can count on plenty of twists from Catherine McKenzie.  There are more Jessica Williams that have been tricked and had their accounts emptied, and each one is given a number.  

I really liked McKenzie's last book (I'll Never Tell), but this one didn't work as well for me.  Yes, the suspense was intense as worry for Jessica One increases, and yes, it is slick and manipulative, and yes, the grand twist was a surprise...and yet....  

Read in February.  Blog review scheduled for May 18.

NetGalley/Lake Union Publishing
Suspense.  June 9, 2020.  Print length:  355 pages.

7 comments:

  1. I'm looking forward to reading this book! And you're right to say she has the ability to generate anxiety in the reader. This is one reason why I enjoy reading her books. :)

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    1. :) It wasn't my favorite of her books, but her skill at creating tension and anxiety if amazing.

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  2. I do like a book with tension and suspense and a few good twists...but it sounds like I should try and read I'll Never Tell first because you liked it better than this one. :)

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    1. I've been back and forth on McKenzie's books, loving some and others not so much. :)

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  3. I like the scam that's the premise of this one. Sort of a manual data-mining scam similar to what is done by scammers on Facebook all the time in a slightly more sophisticated way. Same result, though.

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    1. Although far-fetched (targeting Jessicas specifically) it is a clever premise--easy to see how it could play out if some nice person with the same name suggested twenty questions. Data-mining, indeed!

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  4. That cover is definitely reminiscent of Gone Girl with just the hair. I think the premise here is great. Sorry it didn't quite live up to its potential for you. If I read this author, I will start with I'll Never Tell since you feel it was stronger.

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