I think in triangles. You think in straight lines.
I show you a table and make you believe it’s a chair.
Smoke and mirrors, sleight of hand, misdirection. I trick and deceive.
But most of all, I put on a good show.
The world thinks I killed a man, but I didn’t. Bear with me. It’s all a part of the plan.
Revenge is what I want. I want it for me and I want it for her.
I want it for all six of us.
She doesn’t remember me, but she’s the reason for everything. She’ll be my prize at the end of all this – if I can hold onto my willpower, that is. Maybe I’ll slip up a little, have a taste, just a small one.
So go ahead and pick a card. Come inside and see the show. Look at my hands, look so closely that you can’t see what’s happening while you’re so focused on looking. I’ll be destroying your world from right here in the spotlight.
You’ll never see me coming until it’s too late.
I’ve only got one heart, and after I’ve pulled off my grand deception I’ll hand it right to her.
So, sit back, relax, and let my girl tell you our story. You’re in for one hell of a ride.
Comment: One more book by this author, whose blurb had caught my eye, to add to the list of things I have read by her. My experience has been mixed, some books seemed great, others less so. This one stays in the middle.
Matilda lives with her lawyer father and she helps him with his work, although he doesn't have a big office. To help with the money, her father decides to accept a lodger, and in comes Jay Fields, a charismatic man, an illusionist who had a lot of success in the US and is now in Ireland, apparently for work. Her connection with him is immediate and they become friends, but there's always this weird tension between them and it doesn't seem to be explained only by sexual attraction. What is Jay hiding and why, of all places, did he choose to stay with Matilda and her father? When some problems seem to come to light in regards to a trial case Jay is involved with and in which Matilda's father is helping too, will the truth be too much for Matilda?
Overall, what comes to mind when I think of this novel is "average". Everything felt kind of average to me, even though the fact Jay is an illusionist is quite the detail. In a way, this author is very clever in deciding which job/area to give to her characters, all of them are somehow linked to some cultural or artistic field. But an original activity can't be enough to sustain a plot.
This story is also told in first person by Matilda, as is the author's style. Unfortunately, here I could not fully disconnect from it and there were times where, as so often happens to me, the focus on Matilda's inner monologues was too much and gave the story an almost sense of lack of maturity. Matilda is 23, Jay is four years old, but following her thoughts made me imagine them much younger, juvenile. Of course, life experience has made them seem more mature at times and if I think about certain scenes, this is visible, but having only her POV, in this novel, kind of brought the grade down for me.
Although it is a little obvious how the characters are connected, I was still interested in seeing how the author would play out the journey until we finally have explanations. I think Jay has an interesting path in life and I can understand the reasons why he behaves the way he does while the plot develops. Matilda is less complex, but for the most part I thought she was a genuine and friendly person and while I wasn't particularly motivated to see them become a couple, I was glad they found happiness.
The romance is OK, I suppose, but it didn't impress me because it felt like they were teenagers. All of Matilda's thoughts about Jay and the weird stuff they do together go on and on so that we could have scenes with them both flirting and getting close enough for falling in love to be believable from her POV alone (she goes to a seminar to practice being comfortable talking to guys and he randomly is able to go with her). This becomes repetitive and, frankly, a little annoying after a while. I wanted more nuance and inner development, not only sexy thoughts.
The plot about the reason why Jay came to Ireland and a lawsuit he is involved with is intriguing enough, and has some cute scenes, but this is all very superficially presented. I didn't exactly mind this, but then the resolution of the legal case sets too much on situations that are too coincidental or simplistic. I liked the idea but the execution seemed a little too simple to me.
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