Jane Corry - I Looked Away

Synopsis

Despite Ellie’s best efforts to keep her family together, it was never enough for her husband. 20 years of pain and resentment had finally built up as she couldn’t turn another blind eye to his unfaithful ways. After a final promise that he’d change, Ellie overhears him on the phone to the woman who contributed to her suffering and accepts that the family she had worked so hard to build is no longer worth fighting for

Likes

I always like a good twist in novels and this one was no exception. When Jo got arrested, I had to re-read it as I thought that my eyes had deceived me when they called her Ellie. From that point on, I was convinced that Jo was never real in the first place and that Ellie must have been talking to herself in public, even though this theory made zero sense. Then it turned out that Jo was real, and Ellie had adopted her persona. It was a bit of mental gymnastics trying to make it make sense, but I enjoyed the twist, and the author did well in building upon it to make for an interesting story I hadn’t come across before

Corry does a great job of using this novel as a vessel to spread awareness on homelessness and mental health conditions. The author is clearly passionate about such issues and it shows. As a result, she succeeds in not only informing and educating the reader, but also in entertaining us

Dislikes

As creative as the storyline was, I felt that the writing style was rather bland which limited how invested I was. Although I was quite engaged in part 1, the change in writing style as the story progressed unfortunately reduced this as I much preferred the pace and dynamics in this first part. Additionally, I felt that there was a lack of personal and emotive writing as I was unable to empathise with the characters and understand their thought processes, feelings and attitudes

I didn’t really enjoy the back and forth. It was quite frustrating to read one story which was cut short as I was brought to a different period in time and told another. Although the past does catch up to the present eventually, I wasn’t a fan of this style but understand that it leaves the reader thinking “I wonder what happened?”. Nonetheless, I would have preferred the book to be consistent and written in the same style as it was in part 1

General thoughts

I wasn’t too fond of Amy and couldn’t understand how she didn’t look down on her dad’s actions like her brother did. To add insult to injury, she would say some horrid things to her mum, insinuating that it was her own fault that her father was unfaithful. Conversely, Luke was a great and supportive son and I love that he relocated from Australia to England just to be with his mum

I appreciate the author adding references of where she got her information on the mental illnesses from. It displays a great level of care about spreading accurate awareness to such matters and I thought it was very thoughtful, considerate and shows how much she wanted to understand before speaking on these topics

Rating

This novel tells a creative story with an interesting twist but because of the writing style, I wasn’t very invested. There was also a lack of personalisation which limited my empathy for the characters as I didn’t feel that I understood them and their actions, causing me to feel detached from them. Nonetheless, I learned a lot about homelessness and mental health conditions which I wasn’t aware of before reading this novel and Corry does a great job of spreading awareness of these issues through this story

Based on this, I would give this book a 3/5

Would I recommend?

I appreciate that despite the story being fiction, there was a lot of true information provided on homelessness and mental health conditions which Corry shares with the reader, allowing us all to become more knowledgeable in these areas. However, I found it quite challenging to fully engage in this novel so would unfortunately not recommend this book

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