REVIEW: "How to Save a Life" by Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke
Do you know what drives me nuts?
An earworm.
And I don’t mean some fucking gross worm that crawls into your ear — because, first of all, per Google, that doesn’t exist and, second, that would more freak me out than drive me nuts
I mean a catch AF song what works its way into your brain and then just plays.
And plays.
And plays.
On repeat.
Until you slowly go mad.
Fortunately, some years ago, I learned a technique to get rid of these unwanted invaders of your semi-conscious mind.
You just sing the words to the Star-Spangled Banner to the tune of the Gilligan’s Island theme song.
You know... like,
Oh say 🎶 can you see 🎶 by the dawn’s early light 🎶 what so proudlllllyyyy 🎶 we hailed.
I'm serious.
It works.
Every fucking time.
And why am I telling you this, you are undoubtedly wondering?
Because every f-ing time I picked up this book that song by The Fray drilled its way into my brain.
Which was, I am pleased to say, the ONLY thing I found annoying about this book.
Somehow both ridiculously adorable and tragically heartbreaking simultaneously, this novel got me right in the feels.
A departure from most of Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke’s recent work, How to Save A Life is less straight thriller and more romantic suspense.
It was, at its heart, a story about love lost and love found… and then love horrifyingly and gruesomely lost again.
Given that it’s been 10 years since their rom-com-worthy break-up, Dom should have moved on from Mia.
But, like many a lovelorn individual, he hasn’t.
Though Dom doesn’t spend every waking minute thinking of her, he dedicates more conscious thought to their failed romance than is probably healthy.
So, when Mia, quite unexpectedly, shows back up in his life, he jumps at the opportunity to give their love a second shot.
They’ve both aged and matured, he logically figures, so maybe it will be different this time. Since he was pretty much single-handedly the cause of their first breakup, if they just rewind, maybe now that he has his head on straight he won’t fuck it up.
It’s with this goal in mind that Dom sets up their first date since reuniting. He plans a trip to a carnival. And he consciously decides to avoid the behaviors that lead to their break-up before.
So, when Mia suggests they go on a fear-inducing carnival ride, Dom resists the urge to dismiss the request and, instead, goes with her. But, as it would turn out, his instincts were right. To his terror, the rickety ride fails in just the epically horrible way you would expect all rickety rides to fail.
Both he and Mia are tossed from the ride and, while he survives, she does not.
Dom is heartbroken. Almost beyond consolation.
As it would turn out, though, his devastation is only temporary. When he wakes up the next morning he doesn’t himself not one day older, ready to spend his first day in a world in which Mia is no longer alive. He is, instead, back at the start of the day he just lived.
Mia is alive. He has a chance to do it all over again.
Maybe this time, he can figure out how to save a life.
For this decidedly less comedic Groundhogs Day literary reboot to work, we needed a central character who we could root for. And Fenton and Steinke gave us one.
Dom was, like so many of the best characters, inherently flawed. But, uncommonly, he recognized his flaws. Though, on the outside, it seemed as if the battle Dom waged each new day was between him and some truly fucked-up outside force intent on causing him pain, what we come to learn is that the conflict is really internal.
Dom is fighting within himself to overcome who he was. He is fighting within himself to become who he has always wanted to be.
One character to whom I didn’t feel quite as strong a draw, though, was Mia. Which… is surprising. Given that I am not a psychopath, you would think that I would develop an emotional connection to a character who met her tragic end in this book more times than 8-year-old me re-watched that episode of Punky Brewster in which Cherry locked herself in the old refrigerator while playing hide and go seek — which was, for the record, A LOT of times. But… I oddly didn’t.
There was something about Mia that I didn’t really warm to. Perhaps it was her flippancy. Her seeming disregard for the attempts Dom was making to save her life. In fairness, she didn’t know that he was trying to save her life, but still. She just felt… like someone I wouldn’t be friends with.
My disinclination to buddy up with Mia aside, though, this novel was fresh and original. Fenton and Steinke showed their skill, managing to replay the same day again and again for their readers without inducing boredom.
With strong pacing and a naturally captivating premise, this novel is likely one you will read in just a single sitting.
It earns 4 out of 5 cocktails.
How do you feel about carnival rides? I’ve never been particularly afraid of them… but, as I’ve aged, I’m becoming less interested in trusting my life to a ride that has been dis- and re-assembled probably 8 dozen times by low-paid, traveling workers. Do you trust these rides? Tell me about it in the comments, below.
Let’s see… what’s next? Subscribe to updates in the sidebar and follow me on Goodreads to see what’s next on my TBR.
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