"No matter how much you want to believe what they tell you, you realize you can't really keep yourself safe".

If She Did It by Jessica Treadway

If she did it, also called Lacey eye, is an emotionally upsetting and violent book that is by no means a bad book but it’s subject matter is quite heavy and I would recommend reading it when you’re in a decent mood frankly.

I am not going to do a plot recap as I don’t want to give anything away to anyone who plans to read this. However I really didn’t like this that much and I do have to discuss the character building and what my reasons were for not liking it so I am writing spoilers below and there will be a lot of them.

This is an example of a book that I easily could have loved but because of the lack of information about one character, I cannot say I liked this.

Here is why:

SPOILERS:

I wanted to know more about Dawn. There is a lack of information that frustrated me so much. I really think, if at least part of the story could have been told from Dawn's prospective, I would have enjoyed it more.

I wanted..very much..to know what made this girl tick. She was obviously a sociopath but was she always? In the mother's depiction early on she was described as very different. I went through the book feeling like I did not really know her or anything about her.

The book was also just to brutal for me..and I read many dark books..most of my books are dark honestly. I felt so sorry for the dad in this. The mother too and the sister. I could not stand Dawn but wanted to know more about all the characters.

I also did not get the parents. Did they not love Dawn? Why was the mother so ashamed of Dawn when she had a panic attack? Why did they try to hide her singing talent? Nothing made sense.

I am sure the parents loved her as they were depicted as good decent people so I did not get their actions. Dawn is depicted as someone with virtually no sense of self. But I guess I wanted the book to go into the psychological elements way more then it did.

But there was such an unfinished feel for me about the whole story. There was barely even any confrontation between Dawn and her mom. The book left me with so many more questions than answers and it left me with a feeling of frustration but I really think the writing was good as it would have to be to get under my skin the way it did.

I obviously did like some aspects of it. It had power..I was really upset and affected by it and felt the writing was really poignant . For me it was the characters motivations, their actions..I wanted to get into their heads and I wanted more even from the mother who is telling the story. I did not get that and that is why I did not like it as much as I feel I could have. ( )

If She Did It is quite a quick read as you can't wait to find out what really happened on the night that Hanna's husband Joe was killed and Hanna was left for dead. All the evidence points to Rud Petty, the boyfriend of Hanna's youngest daughter, Dawn, and Rud was convicted of the crime but the question on everyone's lips is how involved was Dawn? Now that Rud has launched an appeal, with Hanna still unable to remember, there's every chance that Rud will be released. Is he guilty or innocent?

A mother's natural instinct is to protect her daughter so perhaps Dawn was there that night (as it seems like EVERYONE thinks) and Hanna's brain is protecting her by not remembering something she doesn't want to know. Dawn hasn't exactly had an easy life: cursed with a lazy eye she struggled to fit in at school and didn't even seem to fit into her own family. Some of the things Dawn said as a child really pulled at my heartstrings as she seemed to identify herself as an outsider. Hanna's life also hasn't been the bed of roses we are led to believe at the beginning, she has been nurturing a seed of guilt that has ended up sprouting into an overgrown weed. Jessica Treadway really puts the Schutt family under the microscope as the reader gathers all the evidence and becomes judge and jury.

Great characters, although none that I actually liked, and a steady plot made this a slow-burning page turner; once you start it you can't read fast enough to find out If She Did It.
( )

A mother knows her daughter. Doesn't she?

Obviously, Hanna knows her youngest daughter, Dawn, isn't perfect, but who is? Hanna is determined to give her the benefit of the doubt, even when no-one else will - even when everyone else believes Dawn was involved in a plot to murder Hanna and her husband, Joe.

Let's hope Hanna is right, as her life is about to depend on it...

-- What's it about? --

When socially awkward and intellectually weak Dawn gets a boyfriend her family are puzzled (what does he see in her?), unimpressed (who does he think he is?) but relieved (she must be normal after all).

Then Dawn's parents are brutally attacked in their bed at night with a croquet mallet taken from their garage. Joe dies. Hanna survives, scarred, anxious and blaming Dawn's boyfriend, Rud. Before the ambulance whisks her away, Hanna also implicates Dawn, but when she recovers from her coma, her memories of the attack are gone and Dawn has an alibi.

Rud Petty is convicted; Dawn denies knowing anything about his murderous plans; and Hanna focuses her energies on her own recovery - until Rud's conviction is overturned and a new trial looms.

If she is to keep her husband's killer in prison, Hanna must remember the events of that horrific night. But can she?

-- What's it like? --

Reflective. Questioning. Frustrating.

From the moment Dawn returns to Hanna's life, the reader is sceptical of her motives. She is obviously lazy and grasping, alternately stupid and conniving. Yet Hanna, despite possessing another daughter who has not opted to love a sociopath, is determined to ignore or minimise Dawn's faults, preferring to gently nudge her towards employment and tolerate her slovenliness.

What I like about this is Treadway's psychological acuity. Hanna empathises so strongly with Dawn's weaknesses that she is deliberately blind to her faults. When reflecting on Dawn's amblyopia she admits that: 'Even though I was a nurse, I hadn't seen a problem in my own daughter. Well, I didn't want to.'

Meanwhile Hanna's thoughts drift to Emmett, her neighbour's son, who is a similar age to Dawn - and who was put forward by Rud Petty's defence team as a possible suspect in Joe and Hanna's attack. Emmett's mother, Pam, spends her life defending him, telling neighbours that 'he can't help it'. Ironically, Hanna, who suspects very strongly that Emmett is simply unpleasant, continues to protect Dawn, refusing to even admit knowing her daughter's address to the prosecutor.

-- Final thoughts: did she do it? --

'We were halfway home before somebody coming the other way flashed his lights at me, and I realised we'd been driving dangerously in the dark.'

This book has also been sold under the title 'Lacy Eye' due to Dawn's childhood mis-hearing of 'lazy eye', which becomes short-hand for Hanna refusing to see or accept the truth. Personally, I thought the answer to the ultimate question was rather obvious, though I understood everyone's attitudes and positions. This would be a great book group read as discussing the family dynamics would be very rewarding.

The psychological insights are the real strength of this book: as frustrating as Hanna's attitude is, (the truth has to be revealed via documents before she is able to begin to accept what happened that night,) I defy anyone to step into her shoes and act differently. After all, as Dawn says, 'If you don't remember, you can't have bad memories, right?'

Read this as an exploration of a mother-daughter relationship and consider: how far would you go to protect your child? ( )

I had been looking forward to reading this book but, although the subject matter was promising, I found that the narrative never quite matched up to the promise. It was an easy to read story but far too predictable and, at times too rambling. Some psychological veracity but not much plotting credibility! ( )

Hanna is struggling to cope with life following a vicious home invasion that left her husband dead and her disfigured. Hanna's daughters are also affected, the older one Iris has split from her husband and is seems depressed, Dawn moved thousands of miles away to escape the suspicions of the community. Her younger daughter's boyfriend was convicted of the crime but now he has been given leave to appeal, the prosecutor wants Hanna to testify in the new trial but she has little to no memory of the attack and now Dawn wants to return home.

I really ought to have disliked this book as it seems contrived, long-winded and blatantly obvious but I actually really loved it. The twists and turns of family life are well-portrayed and, whilst Hanna is a passive victim, one can understand her motivations. The premise is a quite clever one but I found that the last 10% of the book dragged a little to far after the denouement. ( )