If You Tell is a grim - on more than one level - choice for our Book Group this month. Essentially, it's a shlock true crime show spewed into book form. Not a genre I'm particularly familiar with - and if I'm honest, probably not one I will return to.I was initially distracted by some truly lurid prose and odd sentence construction in early chapters. But it did settle down to become a straight forward retelling of a case of child and adult abuse, neglect and murder which I was previously unaware of.
The incidents contained within are truly nightmarish and if you have any unresolved trauma in a related area, possibly best avoided. On the plus side, it has a certain pace to it - and felt like chillingly accurate in its description of reality distortion, gas lighting and other forms of coercion employed by malignant individuals.
I'm also uncomfortable with the book structurally as a sizeable majority focuses on the grim detail - rather the police investigation, court case or even wider fallout on the three daughters and how they coped, insights gained etc. The absence of the last of these is a great pity, because I suspect the sisters have a lot to say about resilience. Also disappointingly, the main antagonist has no real contribution to make to the book and so their motivations, origins of their mindset etc remain a mystery.
Currently free to read if you have Amazon Prime.
Overall: Hard to recommend.
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