Eve Ainsworth - Duckling

Lucy's life is small, but safe. Every day she goes to work, checks in on her unstable, alcoholic father, then spends her evenings watching old Columbo reruns, isolating herself away from the rest of the community on her South London estate.
Her routine is all that she can handle, given what happened in her past.
So when her new neighbour Cassie asks Lucy if she could look after her seven-year-old daughter Rubi, she is reluctant to agree.
Then when the hours pass, and then days, and Rubi's Mum doesn't come back, Lucy's worst-case-scenario is now her reality. Lucy is not only responsible for herself anymore. She is responsible for a scared little girl who needs her help.
Something has happened to Cassie, and Lucy must find her before it's too late.

Comment: I was probably captivated by the idea of reading about a woman who would need to discover something about herself and that would mean to change her life, otherwise I really can't remember why I'd add this book to the pile...

In this story we meet Lucy, whose life is predictable and rather isolated. Something happened while she was a child which made her want to stay with safe options, and then dealing with her father's alcoholism pushed her even further into such routines that she prefers to avoid other people. Things change one day, soon after her new neighbors Cassie and her daughter Rubi move into the apartment next door. Cassie asks Lucy if she can look after Rubi for a few hours since no one else is around to help her. Lucy can't think of a way to refuse but this leads her into a complicated situation, since Cassie isn't only delayed for a while as she said; it's been more than one day and the messages she sends don't make the best of sense. Will Lucy find help in the small number of people she interacts with so she can find Cassie and her have her life back to normal?

When I saw the labels on GR that classify this book, along with the blurb, I've kind of imagined a potential fiction story with mystery vibes and, perhaps, some romance... at least this is how I started thinking of it and my expectations were of a story with these elements somehow. It's actually funny how a word or a sentence might seem to indicate one thing and that thing is correct, but at the same time it's not.

It's true this story has all the things mentioned, but the way they were put together is the key. 

The main character, Lucy, is indeed a quiet woman, who had some traumatic emotional experiences and she chose to protect herself by becoming isolated and only socializing the minimum, hoping this would save her from hurting again. She has a complicated relationship with her father but still visits every week, has done what she could while he kept on being alcoholic and of course she goes to work, does the necessary, but her life is very static. I was hoping we could see her development and why she would need to start to change.

Meeting the new neighbors was an important plot move but to be honest, I wasn't really impressed with the characterization of Cassie and Rubi. At some point, if felt as if they were only a means to an end and not really established characters. Cassie seems to be hiding something, asks Lucy for help and doesn't come back when she said she would. The mystery label is clearly related to this and to the attempts Lucy tries of discovering what happened, not only because Cassie fails to come back when she said, but also because Lucy wants to go back to her routines.

I should say that I was easily distracted by other things while I was reading this and one or two times, my lack of concentration meant I've read some passages without really paying enough attention but I also think the progress of Lucy's "self discovery" wasn't that great or captivating. She went through the motions, but it felt the necessary emotional progress wasn't in par with what her physical actions were. I would say the author had a good idea but didn't execute it as smoothly as it required.

Of course, while Lucy is trying to know what happened to Cassie, she does interact with a few others, namely her father and boss Jimmy, and they also have a role in her development. With these two, the author wanted Lucy to confront some issues and wanted her to be forced to deal with things she was pretending weren't there. The thing is, while I cannot say these issues didn't merit the time and the effort of using them in the first place - it would be important for Lucy - I also felt a little disappointed in how the author wrote this into Lucy's "road". I can understand the author's tactic but, again, the writing execution wasn't what I think the story required.

In fact, I'd say my biggest issue is, as often happens with books I consider average, is how the writing makes things look one thing when a few different options might make it another. For instance, I liked Lucy was shy and wanted to be left alone, and that she would need to change her ways, but instead of making Cassie stay away for some secret problem, why not "forcing" Lucy to interact with others for other reasons? This, along with a few more emotional scenes instead of trying to make Lucy into a Colombo - a decision the author used since Lucy liked the show so much, I suppose - could have turned this story into something stronger.

The romance was really just a hint, nothing obvious happens. I think it's one more way for us to feel Lucy could have a new life, could see life differently and one or two scenes were interesting but then, when the end of the book comes, everything feels so unfinished that I doubt if the author really knew what to write or if the idea had been for things to remain superficial since the beginning. If so, I cannot say I loved the choices used. I've finished the book with a "meh" feeling.

All in all, this story about a woman who needs to discover herself while dealing with some emotional issues and trying to locate her missing neighbor seemed to have a good base but wasn't executed in a way I'd consider was the best.

Grade: 6/10