REVIEW: "The Other People" by CJ Tudor
I’ve always had a bit of an issue with mirrors… especially at night.
I really don’t think I was born with this phobia.
Quite the contrary, I think it was installed in me when, as a still-impressionable adolescent, I ingested a steady diet of pop culture.
I know now that I almost certainly watched too many movies in which a woman leans down to spit out some toothpaste or splash water on her face and, upon standing, sees in the reflective glass a menacing figure lurking behind her.
Inches away.
Waiting to grab her and, no doubt, using the extreme musculature of his ropy arms, squeeze the life out of her.
Even writing it now, I get shivers up my spine and feel compelled to look behind me.
This whole concept freaked me out so much, in fact, that as a child I asked my mom to take the mirror out of my bedroom.
Just for the record, she declined my request, clearly willing to risk her only child’s safety on the gamble that my fear was unfounded.
Though this phobia still lingers, I haven’t really thought about it recently.
I am, after all, a 37-year-old mother of two. I have to be the brave one who assures my kids that there aren’t monsters under the bed or boogeymen lurking around corners or creepy killers hiding in the shadow, waiting for you to stand in front of the mirror.
But, if I had any doubt whether this phobia, though largely dormant, still lingered at the back of my consciousness, I no longer do. This novel, the third by C.J. Tudor, completely renewed my subscription to this as-of-yet unfounded source of worry.
It all starts when Gabe, a relatively generic businessman and father, is driving home one day. During his frustratingly traffic-rich drive, he’s thinking about how much trouble he is going to be in with his wife. He had promised to get home early enough to spend quality time with his daughter, Izzy, but now thanks to traffic — and to other factors outside of his control — he won’t be.
He’s contemplating how he will make it up to her — and how much trouble he will really be in — when getting into yet another row with this wife becomes the least of his concerns.
He sees something that changes everything.
In a beat-up, bumper-stick-plastered, car in front of him he spots a young girl.
She looks scared.
She looks helpless.
She looks like his daughter.
Gabe’s concern amplifies quickly when he decides that the little girl he has spotted doesn’t just look like his daughter, she is his daughter.
And she sees him, too.
And she’s saying something.
“Daddy.”
His cellphone nearly dead and no charger in sight, he tries to follow the car, weaving dangerously through the London traffic, determined not to let the vehicle in which his daughter is trapped escape.
All too quickly, though, it becomes clear that, despite his best efforts, he won’t be able to keep up with this car. So, against his better judgment, he pulls off at a rest area and calls for help.
But there will be no help that day.
Or for years.
And now, three years later, Gabe is doing all he can think to do: traveling up and down the stretches of highway that surround metropolitan London, stopping at rest areas and hunting for answers that it seems increasingly likely he will never find.
Though his quest seems futile, even to Gabe himself, he continues, certain that, eventually, he will find something.
And then, he does.
A cryptic figure who Gabe knows only as “The Samaritan” directs Gabe to a lake.
A lake in which Gabe finds the car that he failed to catch all those years ago.
And, in that car, there is a body.
It was at this point that I completely fell in love with Gabe and became — perhaps overly — personally attached to his journey.
I read on — even more voraciously than usual. I was desperate for him to have the happy ending that I know so seldom concludes a thriller. And I was nervous that Tudor was going to screw me over and transform him from hero to villain, proving once again how shitty my taste in men actually is.
I was more invested in this protagonist than I was in the protagonists of Tudor's previous two works.
And I suspect most people would be.
Because he was both more inherently likable and more commonly relatable.
I could understand — as most people likely could — how a father who lost his daughter in such a manner, and was trying to carry on living entirely without closure, can do nothing but spend his every waking hour looking for her and his every sleeping hour dreaming of her.
And it’s not just Gabe who is relatable.
There is a relatively large cast of secondary characters, all playing a significant role in his hunt, who are equally compelling.
A single mother with a strong moral compass who exhibits the strength of both body and character that many would hope to possess, for example.
Each of these characters, while flawed, were people that you wanted to see succeed — and people that, if you have read Tudor’s previous works, you were relatively certain wouldn’t meet a happy end.
Ultimately, it was through this characterization that Tudor managed to produce a work that was unputdownable and, on the whole, deeply successful.
If this book has a weakness, it’s plausibility.
While I deeply enjoyed this book, I do have to admit that, in order to believe the plot as laid out in the novel, you have to seriously suspend your disbelief.
You have to commit yourself to believing that coincidences — some seemingly impossibly unlikely — were possible.
Readers who commonly lodge the complaint that this wouldn’t happen, or that wouldn’t happen, or those people would never meet, or you can’t knock a car out of the sky with a helicopter, will likely find the many coincidences that fill this novel frustrating.
But I, a semi-professional disbelief suspender, had no issue with this.
Repeat readers of C.J. Tudor should be warned that this novel was a departure from her freshman and sophomore efforts. Specifically, it was significantly less focused on the supernatural.
While there were elements of the supernatural in this book they certainly weren't the focus of this novel. The supernatural was just there. On the periphery, really. While, at its heart, this was more of a straight thriller.
And a good thriller at that.
With likable characters in which you could hardly help becoming invested and a beautifully woven, intense plot, this novel succeeded.
It earns 5 out of 5 cocktails from us.
This question might sound foolish, but are you afraid of the dark? I had always expected to outgrow these childish fears. Yet, I’m not sure I have. Tell me about your fears in the comments, below.
What’s up next? Find out by following me on Goodreads and subscribing to blog updates on the sidebar to the right.
* Drink. Read. Repeat. is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. As an associate, we may earn commissions, at no cost to you, from qualifying purchases on Amazon.com
