"How Will I Know You"

“How Will I Know You?”
Written by Jessica Treadway
Review written by Diana Iozzia


“How Will I Know You?” is a murder mystery fiction novel that surrounds the strangulation and eventual abandonment of the body of a high school senior named Joy. The story is told in four, sort of five, perspectives. Susanna tells her story of her affair with another character, and her devastation as a result of her daughter’s murder. Martin, her lover, is also the prime suspect. Tom, a renaissance man in the town, feels guilty that when diving for her body, his leg was grabbed, or caught. He worries it was Joy, still alive, but the autopsy later absolves his guilt. His wife is an alcoholic. And pregnant after years of heartbreaking miscarriages. We also hear the story through the perspective of Harper, Joy’s once best friend. This book has a great concept, but the execution of the plot is absolutely disappointing. Two out of four perspectives are just boring. I felt very apathetic towards Susanna, even though her daughter is dead and her mother is dying and has Alzheimer’s. Her character does not regret her affair and absolutely persecutes her husband for little reason. Martin is the totem “black guy wrongly accused of killing a young white girl”. This is very “To Kill a Mockingbird”, and with a character named Harper, you could see where the author was going with this.

Nowhere is this book ever mentioned to be similar to “Mockingbird”. It’s branded with buzz words such as “suspenseful”, “quiet, small town”, “web of deceit”, “fatal consequences”, “poignant conclusion”. WHERE? The only label that rings true is the “quiet, small town”. This book is “To Kill a Mockingbird” with the quirky, unusual fleshed out characters of “Fargo”. This isn’t funny, or sad, or scary. I found myself bored, practically skimming through the narratives of most of the characters. The funeral isn’t sad. The murder isn’t sad. Tom’s narrative with his wife is very sad, but that’s not even related to the murder! He’s mainly involved as the noisy son-in-law of the police chief, and he’s the most interesting character (Out of a bad bunch, the most interesting character, take this with a grain of salt). There are some red herrings, one good one, the rest are bad eggs. I continued to read the book, desperate to see it improve, but my goodness gracious, it probably went to a “I could actually set this book on fire” to “I see where the book was going, and it was just a sad fail”. So, page 220 or so out of 391, I finally got to a point where the book wasn’t completely painless. I really wanted it to be an underdog. I’ve read books where they’ve started out strange, but became amazing after the BIG TWIST. The big twist of “How Will I Know You” comes in the last five pages. 

I really think that the author found herself with a plot that wasn’t planned enough for, so she had to include things to bulk up the book. Joy’s grandmother’s dementia wasn’t great. It wasn’t interesting. Like I said before, I felt very apathetic. You’d think for a book with four perspectives, that there would be enough to say. Martin’s life history of his beloved (but annoying) grandmother, Grandee was not at all necessary. If I ever see the word Grandee again, I will be nauseated. It’s like Beetlejuice, it keeps getting said, and her history keeps popping up. I don’t care at all about Martin. I did like the unexpected plot line of Tom and his wife, but I think this had to be originally planned. I don’t think it was bulk, but hey, yeah, something I actually could bear in the book.

As I mentioned before, the “To Kill a Mockingbird” parallels are almost painful. I like Harper Lee’s book, but in no way, did I want to read a reimagining like this. I was hoping for a creepy psychological murder book, but I received nothing of the sort. “Mockingbird” was creepier than this! You have young Harper, the character, being a spitting example of Scout, the curious, inquisitive girl trying to solve the murder. Tom is similar to Boo Radley, a weird member of the community who people don’t really like. Of course, you have the wrongly persecuted man, Martin, who is similar to Tom Robinson of “Mockingbird”. Okay, I had to look up his character’s name, but ANOTHER TOM. WOW. WHAT A SIMILARITY. Such a coincidence. Okay, looking at the IMDB page, Dill / Delaney? There's a character named Violet in both books. Can we make that connection? I dunno. I might be grasping at straws now, but I don't think I am...

I finished the book last night and absolutely raged after reading who finally killed Joy. This book was in no way worth the time I spent reading this. I don’t like to have to completely annihilate a book like this, but well, yeah. Done.

I received a complementary review copy from the publisher.