Anyone finished reading He Started It? by Samantha Downing?

songbird · ‎03-21-2010

I did. After I read My Lovely Wife, I went ahead and bought the book. The book is about a road trip across the country with 3 siblings, their spouses and their gradfather's ashes. The trip must be completed in order to gain a very large inheritance. The book jumps in time back and forth from the first identical road trip taken while the siblings were children, to the current one about 25 years later.

Now this is a thriller. So I think it's safe to say an unreliable narrator is part of the book, reveling secrets along the way. Along with having written the book as first person, present progressive tense. A unraveling ending is almost inevitable. Without giving too much away...were you satisfied the book was done this way? I don't think the book was possible to have been written in any other way.

SWEET · ‎03-09-2010

@songbird wrote:
I did. After I read My Lovely Wife, I went ahead and bought the book. The book is about a road trip across the country with 3 siblings, their spouses and their gradfather's ashes. The trip must be completed in order to gain a very large inheritance. The book jumps in time back and forth from the first identical road trip taken while the siblings were children, to the current one about 25 years later.

Now this is a thriller. So I think it's safe to say an unreliable narrator is part of the book, reveling secrets along the way. Along with having written the book as first person, present progressive tense. A unraveling ending is almost inevitable. Without giving too much away...were you satisfied the book was done this way? I don't think the book was was possible to have been written in any other way.

@songbird

I read it back in January and I couldn't remember what the ending so I went back to my GR review.

This was a bizarre book from beginning to end to say the least. The plot was riveting and the writing was fantastic.

Quite a family trip revisited 20 years later but with the siblings grown up, but the grandfather is gone. They have instructions to bury his ashes to get his inheritance and have to recreate the road trip across the county going the same places they did with their grandfather. All kinds of things happen, both the first time and this time. How nostalgic can you be? Sort of like deja vu.

The ending is not what I would have expected to say the least and I think I know how it ended but yet it's open-ended in a way.

ValuSkr · ‎03-15-2014

I haveen't read it, but that type of narrative bothers me - one that continuously jumps back and forth between one story and another parallel story. The Lost City of Z was like that.

songbird · ‎03-21-2010

@ValuSkr wrote:
I haveen't read it, but that type of narrative bothers me - one that continuously jumps back and forth between one story and another parallel story. The Lost City of Z was like that.

It was easy to keep track. The preivous trip is told in past tense. And it's only jumped to it occasonally. Because that trip had secrets and shocking ending also. The current story never lets up to it's climatic ending.

beckyb1012 · ‎03-09-2010

Just checked again and my library still as not ordered this one. They ordered her first book but seem to be dragging their feet on this one. I hope they do it soon I just hate spending any $$ but I may have to get this book.

As far as the jumping back and forth I have always liked that approach. I love reading the collaborations Karen White, Lauren Willig, and Beatriz Williams do together. They each pick one woman from a different time period connected to the same location and each write that person's story. A full chapter for each character going back in forth until the book and the stories are complete. Fascinating.

"Live frugally, but love extravagantly."