Review: 'After All I've Done' by Mina Hardy

 What first drew me to After All I've Done was the stunning cover, the business of it and the quiet way in which the title stands out. And then the blurb had everything I could ask for as well: broken friendships, tense marriages, memory loss and a mysterious accident. Who could ask for more? Well, sadly After All I've Done did leave me hanging a bit. Thanks to Crooked Lane Books and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Pub. Date: 11/10/2020
Publisher: Crooked Lane Books

Writing as Mina Hardy, New York Times bestselling author Megan Hart delivers a thrilling new psychological suspense for fans of The Woman in the Window and When the Lights Go Out.

She's lost her best friend, her husband--and possibly, her mind.

Five months ago, an accident left Diana Sparrow badly injured and missing a few months of her memory. As if that's not enough, she's started having recurring nightmares about the night of the accident. Dreams that feel so real, she's left questioning: maybe she didn't just slide off the road into a ditch. Maybe, just maybe, she hit something. Or someone.

She can't turn to her former best friend Val, who's been sleeping with Diana's husband Jonathan for months, but she might find some comfort in newcomer Cole Pelham. Yet the closer they become, the more Diana begins to wonder what really happened that night--and how Cole might be connected. Worse, it seems everyone else could be involved, too.

Who was with her that night? What really happened? As her life unravels thread by thread and the dreams become too real to ignore, Diana will have to face the unthinkable--and do the unforgivable.

One of my favourite things to find out about authors is how they write, or rather, how they craft their plot. I've heard of all kind of methods, from carefully crafted outlines that take up dozens of pages, to more simplified plans that paint a rough picture. Others prefer to just start writing and shape the material as it comes. Tolkien would begin re-typing his document every time he decided to change up something about the plot. As a wannabe-writer myself, I often wonder how I would go about it. The fear of plot holes, of loose endings and an unsatisfying conclusion would probably put me in the former camp, yet I've never been able to properly finish a plot outline, let alone a novel. I'm hammering on about this because a stable plot, and accompanying stable character development, is so crucial, especially in thrillers. In order to keep the suspense going and to keep a reader on the edge of their seat, it does all have to fit together perfectly. A random character can't just remain random. Like Chekov's gun, an obviously displayed plot device has to be used. The issue I ran into with After All I've Done is that much of the plotting felt very recognizable and yet the ending didn't come together for me. Somewhere halfway through the book it lost its cohesion for me and I was wondering if it was all going somewhere satisfying.

Diana thinks she may have lost her mind. After a car accident she is left badly injured and with memory gaps, although harrowing dreams make her think there was more to her accident than her husband is admitting. Her best friend is no longer speaking to her and she is not sure why. A handsome stranger keeps popping up and seems to know her oddly well. So what happened? Honestly, a lot happens! After All I've Done flits back and forth between elements from the past and Diana's current, confused present. The ex-best friend, Valerie, and mystery stranger, Cole, also get the opportunity to narrate chapters, which mostly adds to the confusion. It is clear a lot happened in the time Diana can't remember, but the gaps are not really filled in by the narration from Valerie and Cole. Rather, the tension is predictably heightened chapter by chapter, and then deflates with what feels like a rushed ending that tries to shock but really only feels misplaced. 

This is my first book by Mina Hardy and there were a few things she did in After All I've Done that completely hooked me. The descriptions of Diana struggling with her injuries and the slow road towards recovery was very well done and added an interesting layer to the novel. Sadly this is then occasionally forgotten when the plot calls for Diana to do something physical. I also enjoyed the tension Hardy built between Diana and Cole, although the plotline also felt a little exploitative to me. The plotline with her mother-in-law is often repetitive and yet clearly hinting at danger, which leads to my pet peeve of heroines blatantly ignoring red flags right in front of them. Many aspects of the plot feel predictable, which can be part of the joy of reading thrillers, but then towards the end it seemed as if Hardy felt that she needed to throw in something unexpected to make After All I've Done truly rememberable. Instead the ending is a little sickening and disconnected from the tensions built prior. 

I give this book...

2 Universes!

Although After All I've Done did keep my attention, I found myself rolling my eyes a little too often. When everything was brought together in the end, it fell flat which lead to me questioning just what had kept me interested for so long.