Book Review of Choose Me  by Tess Gerritsen and Gary Braver

Definitely vengeance in this one. Justice in a sense. You’ll have to be the judge of whether justice is served. Also, there is some redemption, Unfortunately, not for Taryn Moore.

This is a common story, but a good one, in the vein of Fatal Attraction. The book opens with a young woman, Taryn Moore, dead on the sidewalk outside her building, having plummeted five stories.

The book has two “sections” – not sure what else to call them. There’s the Before – which is things that happened before Taryn died, and there’s the After – which is what’s going on after her death.

The story is set in Boston and told from multiple points of view. Taryn finds her self-worth in her relationships not so much in herself. Jack Dorian is one of Taryn’s professors. And Frankie is a middle-aged, female police detective who is not convinced Taryn’s death is suicide.

The After sections are present tense. I’m not a fan of using present tense unless the story is meant to be intense. This one is not intense. Not that much suspense. More a mystery. The only time I’ve read a story in present tense that I thought it made sense and added to the story was George Dawes Green’s The Juror.  I won’t go into detail, but that is book worth reading and an intense ride.

The Before sections are in past tense. Overall, I think the authors were attempting to pull the reader more into the story, but that gimmick didn’t really work for me. And we didn’t need the tense changes to know whether we were reading before or after, because each time that switched, there was a blank page with “BEFORE” or “AFTER” on it. Pretty clear when we were.

The story kept me reading. Taryn’s character is almost a borderline personality, so was interesting to me. The authors didn’t really get her all the way there. I worked with several borderlines in the hospital way back in my mental health counseling days. And they are a trip.

Only two major complaints. The ending was given away too early in my opinion. Because of the point of views, we get some major clues earlier than necessary. I pretty much figured it out with 50-75 pages left. I may not have had a couple unnecessary chapters been skipped.

The second complaint is more a gaffe by the authors. Detective Frankie Loomis talks to the media. This is not something that happens. All major police units have media relations people who do all the talking to the press. For major cases, the police chief might, but detectives, nope.

I recommend the book if you like tragedies and stories with a fatal attraction.

As for content, there is profanity. 30 F-bombs, 13 S-bombs, and other words. One explicit sex scene, and honestly, it could have been omitted. No explicit violence. The murder itself is described after the fact. One gunshot fired.

Let me know what you think of it if you read it. I have a book I’m working on with a similar theme. However, mine will be clean.

Book Rankings for 2021

1. The Water Keeper – Holds the top spot.
2. Choose Me
3. The Suriname Job

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