I don't know why the author biog at the front of the book made me not hold out much hope. "Most of her work is realistic fiction about families" For whatever reason this made my heart drop in anticipation of a boring family-dynamic offering.
Thus, or perhaps despite this, I was more than pleasantly surprised by If She Did It - a question which I asked myself more than a handful of times whilst reading it.
I was desperate for Hanna to remember the details of the night in which her husband was bludgeoned to death, and she only narrowly escaped the same fate. But because the truth doesn't appear until late on in the book, we're treated to lots of revealing flashbacks from childhood, and family history, which go a long way to showing a picture of an intriguing family dynamic.
The deceased Joe comes across as controlling but loving. Hanna as a hardworking mother. Dawn as the insecure, bullied and loving daughter. And Iris at the high-achieving, popular eldest child. Even the loyal, gorgeous dog Abby, has a worthwhile, respectable role to play in this family tale.
The past and the present is entwined beautifully throughout the book. And though we're faced with the horror of the relatively recent attack, it serves as a lynchpin rather than an overshadowing element of the story.
I really enjoyed this book. It made it upstairs with me, and got me hooked on quite a bad pain day. So if that's not encouragement to read it, I don't know what is!
