Friday, July 11, 2014

That Night -- Chevy Stevens

Let's make this short.

Ms. Stevens has held me in thrall with some of her earlier novels.

This one read like a first draft script for a bad Lifetime Original Movie, filled from start to finish with characters right out of central casting, in a plot that isn't only predictable but sophomoric.

Plot synopsis: "Bad sister" (whom we all know isn't really bad, just misunderstood) and her "bad boy boyfriend" (whom we all know isn't really bad, just misunderstood) are convicted of murdering her sister, the "good girl," (whom we all know isn't really all that good because she has secrets and she loses weight and cries a lot). "Bad sister" had been bullied by the Golden Girls at school because she was different, and her mother doesn't even like her. At all. After 18 years in prison, she's released, tries to rebuild her life, and then another person is murdered (a now drug-addicted former Golden Girl), after she begins to talk about That Night that Bad Sister's Good Girl Little Sister was killed.

I'm giving this one * out of *****, simply because I finished it, sure that Stevens would surprise me at the end.

She didn't.