“No One Else Can Have You.”
Author: Kathleen Hale.
Publisher: Harper Teen.
Pages: 384.Release date (USA): January 7th 2014. ARC received from Edelweiss.
Unfortunately, Friendship’s police are more adept at looking for lost pets than catching killers. So Ruth’s best friend, Kippy Bushman, armed with only her tenacious Midwestern spirit and Ruth’s secret diary (which Ruth’s mother had asked her to read in order to redact any, you know, sex parts), sets out to find the murderer. But in a quiet town like Friendship—where no one is a suspect—anyone could be the killer.
Summary (taken from Goodreads): Small towns are nothing if not friendly. Friendship, Wisconsin (population: 688) is no different. Around here, everyone wears a smile. And no one ever locks their doors. Until, that is, high school sweetheart Ruth Fried is found murdered. Strung up like a scarecrow in the middle of a cornfield.
Cover impressions: Between the
darkly humorous knitted nightmare cover and the comparisons to Fargo in the
early publicity for the book, I was suitably intrigued. To be honest, I’ve been
suffering from something of a YA slump for a while now and I was mostly glad to
have a young adult read pique my interest after a long drought.
This review contains spoilers.
Let’s get this out of the way: “No
One Else Can Have You” is otherwise a 3 star book. With a driven and
interesting heroine who sticks to the right side of quirky, a claustrophobic
small town setting akin to Fargo & Twin Peaks without the supernatural
elements, and a seriously well considered take on grief and its varying effects
on the bereaved, the book had a lot going for it. For the first half, I was
enjoying myself. Granted, certain elements didn’t work and the central mystery
is predictable but I didn’t mind so much because the intrigue of the journey
far outweighed the obviousness of the destination (although it did begin to
grate on me that Kippy clearly held the answers to all the mysteries in her
hand – with Ruth’s diary, to which we are treated to sporadic readings from
when the plot demands it – but such information is delayed to keep the story
going).
Then it fell apart. Two things
happened.
First, there is a domestic violence joke. To give the scene its
full context, Kippy goes undercover to a therapy group session she previously
attended as a child, dedicated to a non-physical approach for those prone to
violence. She takes along her dead friend’s older brother, a former soldier who
admits he suffers from PTSD and is missing a finger due to an incident which is
disclosed later. The cover story she gives is that he is her boyfriend and he
is beating her. The scene is played for humour, and there is later a punch-line
along the lines of “Well, maybe next time you’ll hug her instead of beating her”
(I won’t provide the full quote until nearer the release date due to possible
restrictions placed on ARCs).
Domestic violence isn’t funny. It shouldn’t be used as a wacky
plot point to get some laughs.
The moment that scene happened, I knew I wouldn’t be giving the
book anything higher than 1 star. It completely tainted the rest of the book
for me. It was a completely unnecessary scene and in hugely bad taste.
Sadly, it got worse.
Later on, Kippy is falsely institutionalised for supposed
delusions. She is sent to a sanatorium populated with the kind of quirky and
wacky patients you expect to see in a Will Ferrell comedy. Kippy’s roommate is
a young woman who believes herself to be a middle aged male British police
officer. Of course, her moments are played for laughs. Even in One Flew Over
the Cuckoo’s Nest, there was at least some acknowledgement of the terrible
attitudes and treatment directed at the mentally ill. Here, there is nothing,
and it’s honestly embarrassing. We as a society tend to label things as “crazy”
or “loony” when what we really mean is “a bit odd” or “out of the ordinary”. This
ableist attitude is something I myself have been guilty of and am trying to
fix. The author’s dismissive attitude towards something as serious as mental
illness really is unforgivable. To use a sanatorium as a cheap shock twist for
her heroine is bizarre at best and cruel at worst.
I can’t overlook the problematic when I see it, no matter how many
other positive elements I can find in a story. “No One Else Can Have You” is
the perfect example of that. It’s a solid and often very entertaining read that
will forever be the book with the gross ableism and domestic violence jokes to
me. You may be able to enjoy the book while acknowledging its problems. Sadly, I
can’t.
1/5.
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