The Other People
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
Original publication date: January 2020
Book description: Driving home one night, stuck behind a rusty old car, Gabe sees a little girl's face appear in the rear window. She mouths one word: 'Daddy.' It's his five-year-old daughter, Izzy.
He never sees her again.
Three years later, Gabe spends his days and nights travelling up and down the motorway, searching for the car that took his daughter, refusing to give up hope, even though most people believe that Izzy is dead.
Fran and her daughter, Alice, also put in a lot of miles on the motorway. Not searching. But running. Trying to keep one step ahead of the people who want to hurt them. Because Fran knows the truth. She knows what really happened to Gabe's daughter.
Then, the car that Gabe saw driving away that night is found, in a lake, with a body inside and Gabe is forced to confront events, not just from the night his daughter disappeared, but from far deeper in his past.
His search leads him to a group called The Other People.
If you have lost a loved one, The Other People want to help. Because they know what loss is like. They know what pain is like. They know what death is like.
Thought:
I had heard very vague things about this book. It was chosen as the first book for the Literally Dead Book Club started by Kayla over in Books and Lala on youtube. Here is the announcement video for that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgks4-oILvU
Moving on.
It took me a while to get into. I had to get the book from Kindle as I did not find it in Scribd as audio and could not find a physical copy in the books store close to me or Amazon. The rest of the online options generally take a bit long to get to me, I'm not sure if its just my luck but oh well.
So I got a digital copy via Kindle. For some reason, the fact I really wanted the physical copy and couldn't get it made me have a hard time to actually want to pick up the book.
Gabe is a man who has a secret and his life is a mess. He is looking for his daughter but there was undeniable proof that both his daughter and wife had been killed. He was the main suspect and even if he was proven innocent everyone in his life shunned him for some unknown reason.
We see Fran and Alice and they are running but that part is a bit uninteresting for me personally, you kind of guess right away who the girl is and its predictably where it will lead. The relationship between Fran and Alice is not greatly explored as the main focus is their fear and close calls of getting caught. A note here: Alice is supposed to be a child about 6 years old and that was a huge surprise for me. I expected more years to have passed and also Alice did not behave like a child. It does make sense for her to be so mature and closed off taking into consideration her life experience on the run.
The waitress who Gabe pays attention to, this feels too cliche and yet with the speculative element is kind of cosmic joke thing. That's what it felt like to me. There were too many coincidences.
The Sandman was a character I was not able to fully understand, he was too knowing and yet it makes sense. He was a man with a purpose, understanding his motive its no wonder he was able to do everything he did and try to help Gabe. Wonder what he will do next.
We do not know many things for a big chunk of the story.
There are simultaneous secrets and mysteries taking place, it was a bit annoying and yet compelling to keep reading in order to find it out.
There is a group the other people who clearly are behind everything that is going on but you do not the why.
I was amazed by the amount of power the Other people have, the foreshadowing they exert as they plant people in the right place at the right time. It's an amazing mastermind behind the organization.
There is very to no character development, the main focus is the story, the who did what, why.
Everyone is related in a way, there were some speculative elements in the story that were never explained and really did not make sense. But still, it gave it a good eerie vibe so I guess that's ok. It was not something I super liked but did not hate it.
There were a few reveals, some were very easy to predict but some were really not foreseeable as we had little to no clue about them. I still liked the way everyone interconnected, it made sense.
The weak point of the story was the ending, it felt too convenient. What I mean here, the romance that was tried to be shoved here I felt was very unnecessary, that's what I mean. But it was still an enjoyable read.
I have yet to see the group discussion for this book but it was good and interesting as we were reading it.
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