Bad, bad bad... (Bad Friends - Claire Seeber)

Member Name: burtybookworm

Product:	Bad Friends - Claire Seeber
Date:	22/07/09 (96 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It passed some time

Disadvantages: see above, I could've read something a bit more decent.

TV Producer Maggie Warren survived a bad road accident, and upon her recovery, her life is about to get decidedly scary.

Maggie agrees to go on the very chat show she used to produce after being blackmailed by her boss Charlie, where she comes into contact with Fay, a fellow survivor who becomes increasingly infatuated with Maggie. Between her boss' blackmail, her broken relationship with the love of her life Alex and the clingy (and creepy Fay) Maggie has enough on her plate to try and keep her secrets buried before they ruin her. To make matters worse, someone is trying to push her over the edge; her flat is ransacked, she is being followed and is being sent abusive text messages.
Who is out to get her?

I recently read a review on this book which said it was an amazing suspense story and so I was intrigued to see if it lived up to it's claim. To put it simply - it didn't. Ok you can stop reading, end of review.

Ha only joking! There are several reasons why this fell very short of my hopes for an absorbing thrill-fest, although undoubtedly, it wasn't appalling and it was an ok read. Firstly, I felt the characters were absolutely appalling. Due to the nature of the story, I understand that most characters have to appear in some way sinister or unlike able, as most of the people that Claire comes into contact with are supposed to be "suspects" of the crimes that are being committed against her. However, I felt that this was really contrived. Not only were these unlike able characteristics forced, the relationships between the main character Maggie and the others also seemed fake.

In fact, Maggie doesn't appear to have any real friends; even her best friend leaves for Australia! This makes it really difficult to build up any sense of "whodunit" and therefore suspense during the book. In this way, the author succeeded in making me think that all the characters in Maggie's life might be responsible, but this didn't at all make their involvement plausible or in fact nail biting at all.

As I have already mentioned, most of the characters didn't have likeable characteristics and overall I didn't think they were well developed throughout the book either. Aside from Maggie, (who is quite frustrating to begin with, which I will get on to!) There is Fay, a fellow crash survivor who has a creepy stalker-infatuation on Maggie, Alex, Maggie's ex-boyfriend, Charlie, Maggie's boss who is blackmailing her and Seb, Maggie's new love interest.

Firstly, Fay. From reading the back cover blurb and from the front cover depicting a broken framed photo of two women, it is easy to assume that the content of this book will more closely involve the relationship of Fay and Maggie. In fact, Fay is barely in the book at all for most of it, occasionally popping up in strange places to freak Maggie out. We never get a sense of who Fay is, she is always a bit of a mystery which would be successful if she wasn't so non-threatening for most of the book! Although she was annoying, it was hard to take her character seriously, and I felt that the author could have done so much more to draw more out of Fay.

The same could be said for Alex who could also have been someone with a bit more substance. He also crops up now and again, and due to Maggie's very vague recollections of how they broke up before the crash, I only got glimpses into Alex's character. Once again, it was a half hearted attempt to make Alex interesting (alcoholism, millionaire father) but it just didn't go far enough to make me drawn to him.

As for Charlie and Seb, they were both slightly more interesting than the others and for different reasons. I felt that Charlie was truly vile as Maggie's boss and so the gut reaction I had from him was a success - although having worked in the TV industry, I recognised the type of character immediately and felt that the author got his sliminess spot on in most ways. Seb was a more interesting character, presented to the reader as a "good" character; good looking, considerate and charming which will obviously make most crime/thriller readers question his credibility.

Then we come to the main character Maggie. This story is told from Maggie's point of view, and for most of it she is vague on details which can be pretty frustrating. The main thing that kept me hooked for most of the story was the fact that Maggie seemed to have such dark and murky secrets in her past. Why is Charlie blackmailing her? Why did Alex and Maggie break up? What happened in the summer to make everyone question Maggie's character? These questions I was desperate to know the answers to...

...but it turned out that these secrets weren't really worth waiting for. I was so utterly disappointed by all of Maggie's secret past that I felt like immediately putting the book down. I didn't quite understand all the hype surrounding these plot lines - they were made to sound so much bigger than they were! Throughout the first half of the book, characters mentioned the terrible things that happened in the summer, how she would have been sacked if her boss had found out, how she wasn't arrested in the end...the answer was so silly and so basic I felt hugely let down.
Not only this, once Maggie's stalker had revealed themselves, I knew immediately why this person had done it and again I felt cheated out of a decent story.

This reads quite well, It passed the time, it wasn't difficult and it was fairly pleasant reading. However, as you can see, the negative list far outweighs that of any positive! A thoroughly disappointing story in all, so much potential but was too vague followed by unbelievable dissatisfaction with the whole story - not good!

Summary: Suspense? Rubbish.