Began reading: 24.4.2017
Completed reading: 25.4.2017
Overall rating: 4 stars
Twenty-two-year-old Charlotte Ford reconnects with Danielle, her best friend from high school, a few days before Danielle is found bludgeoned to death in a motel room. In the wake of the murder, Charlotte’s life starts to unravel as she descends into the city’s underbelly, and meets the strippers, pornographers and drug dealers who surrounded Danielle in the years they were estranged.
Trigger warning: this book contains suicide, rape and substance abuse.
Sunset City by Melissa Ginsburg is a fictional novel that contains mystery and thriller themes. I picked this up from my local library and the blurb really drew me in. I was surprised by how short the book was, but I still enjoyed the narrative.
Danielle and Charlotte were best friends in high school, and a call from Danielle’s mother put the two friends back in contact with each other. A few days after sharing drinks, Danielle is contacted by a detective who announces that Danielle has been murdered. Following Danielle’s funeral, Charlotte gets closer to Danielle’s friends in an attempt to cling to the memory of her murdered friend. But as Charlotte spends more time with these people, she realises that Danielle lived a short and difficult life – an absent and selfish mother, a tumultuous relationship with her boss, an addiction to drugs, and a risky job as an escort. As Charlotte starts to put two and two together, she notices that the people who called Danielle her friend couldn’t be trusted. It’s up to Charlotte to determine who was responsible for Danielle’s death – could it have been her mother, eager for Danielle’s inheritance, or someone else entirely?
The cover of the book promised seductiveness, and it definitely had me hooked from the beginning. The novel was well-written, with zero errors – impressive for a debut book. I was extremely impressed by the detail that Ginsburg infused into the plot. The use of literary techniques, including imagery, dialogue and suspense, made the setting and characters much easier to imagine. In particular, the first chapter where we are introduced to Charlotte and Detective Ash. Furthermore, there were some great quotes throughout the book that I believe deserve to be shared:
Danielle was always weird about money. I guess it means something different when you grow up rich (p. 20).
‘Everybody fucks everybody’ (p. 101).
Tiny details became so important when nothing else was left (p. 101).
Someone had beaten her until she stopped moving, and kept hitting her until her head caved in. I pressed my hands to my face, felt the hardness of my own skull. I couldn’t fathom the passion, the energy it would take to break a person’s head. What had Danielle done to make someone that crazy? (p. 110).
‘Seems weird, though,’ I said. ‘That she would go there.’
‘Why?’
‘That motel looked so crappy. I guess I thought she’d be more… expensive.’
‘You never know what people are into,’ he said. ‘Or where they go to hide’ (p. 120).
As I said before, the blurb really drew me in, so it should come as no surprise that I found the plot to be fascinating and insightful. I enjoyed how the book delved into how the protagonist dealt with her grief and how she wanted to be closer to Danielle through her friends. I have been reading a lot of fantasy books lately, so I decided that this one would give me a break from that genre, and it seems like it did just that – it was refreshing and interesting to see such a realistic portrayal of grief, which I will go into more detail about later.
There were so many plot lines from each of the characters, which made the novel even more appealing. There’s the main plot line: what happened to Danielle? But we also learn about Danielle’s childhood and adolescence, involving drugs and sexual assault, Audrey’s drug use and her relationship with her step-father, Brandon’s fight with Danielle which led to his suicide, and the reasons why Sally wasn’t a big part of Danielle’s life. We also gain insight into Charlotte’s past and how her mother was addicted to prescription drugs. There were so many stories interwoven with the main point of the book, which kept the story from growing dull or stale.
As I mentioned previously, Ginsburg was successful with creating a realistic portrayal of grief. For starters, everyone who had been affected by Danielle’s death experienced grief in a different way. Brandon couldn’t deal with it, so he committed suicide, Charlotte tried to hold on to what was ‘normal’, and Sally attempted to bury he grief with money. This variety of reactions made the text gritty and dark, but especially realistic. It’s not easy to write about grief, as I have observed with other authors, but Ginsburg did an awesome job of it!
I’m unsure of whether plot twists were predictable or unpredictable, so I was left questioning my thought process when I reflected on the book. As I was reading, I considered who could be responsible for Danielle’s death – as is expected in a mystery novel. I thought Sally could be responsible, but Brandon had a motive, especially after he committed suicide. These were red herrings, but I feel like deep down I knew all along who killed Danielle. It seemed so obvious, but also obscure. I suspect that this was a message that Ginsburg was attempting to project throughout the book: you can’t trust anyone based on the way they look or behave in public. Even Detective Ash hinted at this while he was talking to Charlotte. I’m confused as to whether this was a good or bad thing.
There was one thing about this book that I found to be tedious and unrelatable. After Charlotte meets Audrey, the story just seemed to go around in a cycle – sex, drugs and alcohol. I understand that this is to be expected, given that Charlotte grew with this and it was part of Danielle’s life until she died, but it appeared to take up so much of the plot that it got boring really quick. I believe that if Charlotte wasn’t so impressionable, she could have solved the mystery surrounding Danielle’s death much sooner, but I suppose that this is how the story was meant to progress. I just found it difficult to relate to, and I began to lose interest fast.
My favourite character was Detective Ash because he was super sweet, considerate and patient. He put up with so much of Charlotte’s sh*t, which make him a hero in my eyes. He warned Charlotte to be careful around Danielle’s friends, but she didn’t listen to him – why not? I really wanted to like Charlotte, but she was incredibly naïve and lost in her memories with Danielle that she became unappealing as soon as she befriended Audrey.
Speaking of Detective Ash and Charlotte, why didn’t she call him? He was major boyfriend material and seemed like a perfect match for her. She didn’t even provide us with a reason as to why she didn’t want to call him. I will forever be confused about this. But Sally also irritated me to no end. You’d think that she would realise that money won’t solve your problems, but nope. She was so clueless and selfish! I will say one positive thing about her: she didn’t put up with Charlotte’s BS, unlike Detective Ash. Charlotte accused Sally at least twice for killing Danielle’s death, but Sally didn’t really rage or become aggressive which is admirable. She reminded me so much of Alice Cooper from Riverdale – I swear they could be related!
My favourite part of the book was watching Charlotte discover Danielle’s murderer. There was foreshadowing throughout the novel, but it was still a little surprising. I found the way in which the murderer confessed to Charlotte to be clever and unexpected. The confession provided information that explained how this character was driven to murder Danielle, which was insightful.
Recommendation time! If you like Risk by Fleur Ferris, Go Ask Alice by Beatrice Sparks, 34 Pieces of You by Carmen Rodrigues, and Glimpse by Carol Lynch-Williams, you will love this book. Also, I recommend this book to anyone who liked Criminal Minds, The Fugitive, The Cell, Dressed to Kill and Riverdale.
Happy reading!
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