I think of books as authors’ children. They resemble each other, usually not identically, and occasionally you might find two that don’t seem at all similar. They all have the essence of their maker in them, though, which is why I rarely read the same author multiple times. There are exceptions – Anne Tyler, Anne Lamott, Harlan Coben — but for the most part I may read a particular author only once or twice.
I recently read two by Joshilyn Jackson and enjoyed them both. (Not always the case with children.) So how are they similar? Here they are with a side-by-side examination.
Both feature White, middle-class, heterosexual married women with kids. They are a bit beleaguered by their domestic lives: Amy because her teenage stepdaughter doesn’t like her, and Bree because her middle schooler girls are going through a difficult stage. Both also have a newborn.
Bree once trained in theater. Amy is a diving instructor. Both are married to generic men. Bree’s husband is absent from the first half of the narrative so he’s a little harder to grasp. Amy’s husband is a flat character.
Both are harboring secrets: Amy crashed a car in high school that killed a young mother. Bree is hiding from her family that her ten-week-old son has been kidnapped. Both are having flirtations with men: Bree with her high school friend Marshall and Amy with her first love, Tig.
Both have female antagonists: Amy’s new neighbor Roux seems to be onto her, and Bree’s kidnapper, Coral, taunts her over the phone.
There are twists in both stories that I didn’t see coming, and a vaguely conservative attitude towards adultery. You can flirt with someone not your husband, but you shouldn’t go beyond that.
Both were slow burns, taking a while to set the stage before heating up into page-turning suspense. They are about misdeeds in the past that reverberate in the present. Amy and Bree make the proverbial passage from innocence to experience.
My assessment: due to unique supporting characters, these two novels are fraternal twins. The author is skilled at crafting narratives that have emotional resonance.
I do find her style slightly self-indulgent, including too many flashbacks and digressions. (If you zone out for a minute, you time travel.) The phrase “I didn’t want it to end” doesn’t apply to either. I did enjoy them both, though.
Books Smitten 