I just finished Foe by Iain Reid, a sci-fi esque mystery psychological horror (?) I picked up because his other novel, “i’m thinking of ending things”, is one of my favorite books of all time and I recently saw the trailer for the Paul Mescal and Saoirse Ronan adaptation.
While I still found much to adore about his writing, his capabilities to induce a subtle discomfort in his prose and how he specifcally utilises punctuation exclusively to this novel to be tasteful, it’s also precisely how I called the climax from just the 3rd chapter (and even then, I’ve spent the first two gathering the needed evidence to back up my claim).
He throws red herrings of course, some which made me double check on my thoughts because he’s just that good of a horror lit author, but my theory always lined up with what happened for majority of the story regardless of the minor discrepancies so I held onto it, and when all was revealed I was like “AHA CALLED IT FROM THE BEGINNING” and it made me feel proud of myself.
…
Until I realized I’ve basically been padding out a story I’ve already solved too quickly with the puzzle pieces littered throughout only serving to support my theory more so than make me doubt it, and it makes me feel like I’ve wasted precious time that I could’ve spent on other books that could’ve subverted my expectations lol.
With that said, which books were the same experience for you? Did you find satisfaction in being one step ahead of the author? Or do you feel unfulfilled that the story didn’t manage to one up you? Or maybe the end result doesn’t matter, you just enjoyed gathering the information the story presents?
I’d love to know so I can see which books to best avoid and possibly which to pick up next time!
by CommonChoice8078
1 Comment
I read *In a Dark, Dark Wood* by Ruth Ware a few months ago because I liked the title, I am **extremely** bad at figuring out mysteries in books but I had figured out the twist by around the midway point. The book was very bad, in addition to being very predictable.