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56 Days Review: Back-of-Book Description
‘Bloody good.” —The New York Times
”Timely, surprising, emotionally alive, this is about as good as suspense fiction gets.” –Washington Post
No one even knew they were together. Now one of them is dead.
56 DAYS AGO
Ciara and Oliver meet in a supermarket queue in Dublin and start dating the same week COVID-19 reaches Irish shores.
35 DAYS AGO
When lockdown threatens to keep them apart, Oliver suggests they move in together. Ciara sees a unique opportunity for a relationship to flourish without the scrutiny of family and friends. Oliver sees a chance to hide who—and what—he really is.
TODAY
Detectives arrive at Oliver’s apartment to discover a decomposing body inside.
Can they determine what really happened, or has lockdown created an opportunity for someone to commit the perfect crime?
My Thoughts
The Covid books had arrived! But wait – before you go running in the other direction… 56 Days is fiction and takes place in Ireland. So it’s different than the United States experience (if that’s where you’re reading this from). Also, it only adds to the setting of the thriller, it doesn’t act as its own “character” so to speak.
Anyways! This was a Book of The Month pick recently and even though I was a bit hesitant about reading a Covid-related story I gave it a shot. And I’m glad I did!
56 Days was intriguing right from the start of the book. And the start of it was right before Covid became the thing it is now – before anything shut down at all. So the fact that it was looming on the horizon to be this long-term thing that would force people into their homes felt like it added an ominous mystery to the whole plot.
The plot itself was very twisty! In the beginning, I was thinking it’d go one way, then found out I was wrong…then later thought for sure I’d figured it out…but nope! It was something different and even crazier than I’d imagined. Ugh! A fun roller-coaster of “what’s really happening here!?”
The author tells the story from three different points of view – the detective, the main guy, and the main girl. It was really interesting the way it flipped back and forward in time and then also showed how things looked from two perspectives in the past. It was a cool way to tell the story, in my opinion.
The characters felt well-rounded and fully fleshed out. They also each felt relatable in their own ways. The dialogue was smooth and natural, including the inner dialogue presented for each character. There was a lot of questioning and uncertainty on all sides and the author handled that well.
The settings were all well done and easy to picture. Both the city in Ireland and the fact that the Coronavirus was affecting people. It was almost like ready about people in a storm or something, with the way people had to plan and change their behavior. It was cool.
Overall the writing was really good and I very much enjoyed the book. The author has written other books and I fully intend to check some of the others out soon.
Buy It Now!
Favorite Quotes from 56 Days
“People think the decisions you make that change the course of your life are the big ones. Marriage proposals. House moves. Job applications. But she knows it’s the little ones, the tiny moments, that really plot the course.”
“The only way you can lose your own shadow is to stand in the dark.”
“None of us know what we’re capable of, if the circumstances were right. Or wrong.”
“Do you ever think that maybe you have your shit together, it’s just that your shit doesn’t look like everybody else’s?”
“It’s hard to hear you through the glass house you’re standing in.”
In Conclusion
I thought this book was super good and enjoyable. 56 Days gets 4.5 stars from me! The only downfall was that there were a few repetitive parts, but it’s probably pretty necessary for the story. I didn’t find it too troublesome myself but I know some other people might not be a fan of that aspect.
I would recommend this book to anyone who likes suspense or mystery novels. It’s classified as a thriller and it is thrilling, but the mystery and the “who done it” is what stood out the most for me.
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