Disclaimer: this review contains spoilers. 

Welcome back to Amy’s reading corner. Today’s post marks the beginning of a series I am going to do where I review all of the books that have been long listed for the Manbooker prize in 2018. I have reserved all of them at my local library and I’m actively looking for them at reduced prices because I absolutely refuse to pay more than £3.00 for a book on my Kindle and as I’m a student, buying 13 hardback new releases isn’t financially viable for me. Hopefully the library won’t take too long to get ahold of them for me as I’m particularly excited about this year’s long list.

This book was a solid 3 star read in my opinion, it was definitely a gripping and suspenseful story but that doesn’t mean it didn’t have its problems and PLENTY of plot holes which I will discuss in further detail. The story follows 14 year old Jack who is trying to deal with the death of his mother and keep his two younger sisters alive with no other adults in their home. He is able to do this through breaking and entering and has become known to the local police as the ‘Goldilocks’ burglar as he has been eating and stealing the food in the fridges of these homes he breaks into and often sleeping in their beds. There are two other storylines running alongside Jack’s – the policemen who are trying to solve the case of the ‘Goldilocks’ thief and pregnant Catherine While who has had a disturbing break in herself.

Let’s get into the things I enjoyed about this book: I found that Bauer did a really good job creating characters who are 3 dimensional that we are able to empathise with and understand their actions, even if they don’t always do the right thing. Often in thrillers there seems to be a lot of behaviours that are just unlikely and outlandish, I found for the majority of this book that this was not the case. Bauer was able to make these characters leap off the pages, from the small, cunning Jack to the gruff and brusque DCI Marvel. I even found myself feeling bad for DS Reynolds at times, even though he was evidently supposed to be an annoying, pedantic character in the police force. Through Mrs Reynold’s actions where she hid Jack from the police that were looking for him to the eventual release of Jack from police custody, Bauer captures the inherent kindness that can be found in the most unlikely of places.

This book was a true page turner and there was nothing about it that made it particularly difficult to read, the language was fairly basic. The chapters were nice and short and there was a lot of fast paced dialogue between the characters within the book which kept the plot and action going smoothly. My personal favourite character had to be little Merry with her obsession with vampires and her unlikely pet tortoise, Donald. It was humorous that a 4 year old child would be reading It  by Stephen King, I found that little detail to be really endearing. My problems with this book came mainly towards the end of it; overall the pacing was well done, it felt as though the story unravelled naturally and nothing felt forced… until a point. The final quarter of the book felt rushed for me and left me with so many questions, I am now going to outline my qualms in the following paragraphs.

I don’t have any problems with authors who write problematic characters to make a functioning point in a novel, my problem arises when there is gratuitous use of inappropriate nastiness i.e. racism, sexism, ableism, etc. A moment in this book that left me stunned took place during a scene between Catherine and her husband, Adam, after she has had her break in and been threatened. Adam senses that something isn’t right and this is their conversation:

“You sure you’re OK?”

She made herself smile. “I’ll miss you, that’s all. With the baby coming so soon, I’m just, you know…” 

“Hysterical?” he suggested.

“Well,” she shrugged, “I am a woman.”

“True,” he nodded wisely, and they both laughed.

As this book is written by a woman, it just seems utterly bizarre to me that she would write this part of dialogue between a man and wife. Nothing about this is funny to me, it’s just downright offensive. I normally can overlook things like this in books but because it was so casually added into a conversation of two of the ‘normal’ people in the book i.e. people who hadn’t been pegged as being misogynistic or backwards, I found this troublesome.

At the end of reading Snap I was left with more questions than when I went into it. First of all, why did the mother leave her children alone in the car at the hard shoulder? Why didn’t she drive her car further towards the payphone? Why did she get in Adam’s car? Why did Adam choose to prey on her? What was the connection with all the pregnant women? What happened to Adam at the end? Did he die, or did Catherine hand him in? Why did VC run from the police if she was seemingly innocent? Was she connected with Eileen’s murder? What was the need for her to keep such a cryptic record of her customers? What happened with Joy? Is she OK?

A lot of the things that happened towards the end of the book seemed to rely on all of the readers just accepting these unlikely things happening. First of all, Jack’s dad has disappeared for 3 years and for the majority of the book we assume that he has made a new life for himself elsewhere and then all of a sudden, he turns out to be the homeless man that Jack has had a previous encounter with. What?! And Jack only seems to care about him when he needs an adult in the house because he is having legal problems. As Jack is written to be a character who cares deeply for his two younger sisters who are both traumatised and impacted by their father disappearing on them, I don’t think it’s believable that Jack wouldn’t have tried to convince him to come home.

Another element of this book which, again, just seemed to be completely out of the realms of possibility was the deep trust Marvel had in Jack despite the fact he didn’t know him. Why would he let an underage teenager break into the van of someone he genuinely suspected had ties to an unsolved murder case? That made no sense to me.

Overall, this book was good but really that’s all that can be said for it. I’m not sure why this was chosen to be on the Manbooker long list, it seems incongruous compared to the other titles that have been selected this year. It felt rushed and probably could have done with multiple extra drafts before being released, it has been a long time since I have left a novel feeling so confused as to what had actually happened. There was no great plot twist in this book, it was fairly clear from the get go who the culprit was and overall, a slightly disappointing read on reflection.

Do I recommend this? If you’re a fan of thrillers, yes. If you want to read the Manbooker long list this year, yes. If you’re looking for a book that will knock your socks off, no. If you’re looking for a book of Manbooker standard, no. If you’re looking for the next big thing, no.

I cannot see this winning the Manbooker or proceeding on to the short list. My prediction is this will be knocked off before the next round.

Let me know if you have read this book, or if there are any books on the Manbooker long list you’d particularly like me to review.

Keep reading,

-A