Book Report - "The Coworker" by Freida McFadden
“The Coworker” looks like a promising murder mystery on the surface, but I hope we’ve all learned not to judge a book by its cover. Unfortunately, it’s more of a poorly written love triangle drama with a backdrop of murder and mystery.
This one was a struggle for me to finish. Admittedly, I didn’t exactly pursue it initially on its own merit. I was looking for something to listen to while I waited for the audiobook that I ACTUALLY wanted to hear (the next “Dresden Files” book). I sorted by popularity descending and filtered to available audiobooks. The first few were either random entries in a longer series or autobiographies. Sorry, Britney, I’m not really looking for another autobiography right now.
The first book that wasn’t part of a longer series and wasn’t an autobiography was “The Coworker.” Interestingly, my wife had recently purchased another Freida McFadden book as a birthday gift for one of her friends. “The Teacher” wasn’t available, but I figured this might give me some insight into the author and I could ask how McFadden’s other books were. I assumed that such popularity meant that it had to be decent.
My expectation was run of the mill murder mystery with some horror and suspense. In general, those novels tend to be interesting enough to entertain me, even if I’m not invested in the author or their literary world. I figured it was a safe bet to burn a few hours on. Pretty quickly, I realized that ambivalence didn’t apply to this one.
From the beginning, it just felt very juvenile. A character mentions her significant other gaining or losing “boyfriend points” for his actions. What is this, middle school? Per the text, this is a 30-ish year old woman working an office job. Grow up. Later, it is revealed that this same character is having an affair with her boss, and she jumps through a lot of logical hoops to justify her actions. If you can’t tell, I’m not fond of her.
She and other characters also give excessive detail on irrelevant minutia. A lot of murder mystery novels give pretty dense detail, but it’s because they’re giving clues. If you have an eye for detail and inconsistency, you can often identify the culprit before it’s actually revealed in the text. That isn’t the case here. It’s just unnecessary bloat about people, outfits, and other things that have no bearing on the story. You could probably slim down the novel considerably and not lose any valuable information by removing that.
One character is obsessed with turtles. It’s all she talks about. She obsesses over them. I’m not sure if the point is to really underscore her odd personality or potential mental disorders, but it gets old fast. The same effect could have been obtained with maybe just half of the turtle references included. Please, just shut up.
Beyond the characters being annoying and inherently unlikeable, the writing itself is also frustrating. There are several email correspondences in each chapter that seem to go on far longer than necessary. The timeline shifts around randomly, bouncing around a period of about a year. I understand that McFadden is trying to amp up suspense and only give specific plot points away as they are necessary, but it’s hard to keep up with when events happen or how the timeline looks linearly.
Furthermore, there are several ambiguous references to some mysterious events in the past. Lots of “unless they know about… no, they couldn’t” moments. Those can be effective when they’re done properly, but you can’t be so heavy handed about it. McFadden has no concept of subtlety, and it reads like some high schooler’s fan fiction rather than a critically acclaimed novel.
The only marginally redeeming quality of this book is a particular twist. I didn’t expect it, but I’m also not one who can anticipate anything in most murder mysteries, so don’t take that as more of a compliment than it is. After the twist is revealed, the ending is reached in such an unlikely resolution that it almost makes me mad. Hey, let’s forget about the past few months and pretend that things are just peachy now.
At the epilogue, two characters remain with fairly substantial secrets about each other. I suppose that’s typical with this genre. The problem is I don’t like either character, and I don’t care about their secrets. Lots of people do lots of sleazy things to other people, and I felt no sensation of vindication or satisfaction. I’m just annoyed that I wasted a few hours of my life on such garbage.
The first book that wasn’t part of a longer series and wasn’t an autobiography was “The Coworker.” Interestingly, my wife had recently purchased another Freida McFadden book as a birthday gift for one of her friends. “The Teacher” wasn’t available, but I figured this might give me some insight into the author and I could ask how McFadden’s other books were. I assumed that such popularity meant that it had to be decent.
My expectation was run of the mill murder mystery with some horror and suspense. In general, those novels tend to be interesting enough to entertain me, even if I’m not invested in the author or their literary world. I figured it was a safe bet to burn a few hours on. Pretty quickly, I realized that ambivalence didn’t apply to this one.
From the beginning, it just felt very juvenile. A character mentions her significant other gaining or losing “boyfriend points” for his actions. What is this, middle school? Per the text, this is a 30-ish year old woman working an office job. Grow up. Later, it is revealed that this same character is having an affair with her boss, and she jumps through a lot of logical hoops to justify her actions. If you can’t tell, I’m not fond of her.
She and other characters also give excessive detail on irrelevant minutia. A lot of murder mystery novels give pretty dense detail, but it’s because they’re giving clues. If you have an eye for detail and inconsistency, you can often identify the culprit before it’s actually revealed in the text. That isn’t the case here. It’s just unnecessary bloat about people, outfits, and other things that have no bearing on the story. You could probably slim down the novel considerably and not lose any valuable information by removing that.
One character is obsessed with turtles. It’s all she talks about. She obsesses over them. I’m not sure if the point is to really underscore her odd personality or potential mental disorders, but it gets old fast. The same effect could have been obtained with maybe just half of the turtle references included. Please, just shut up.
Beyond the characters being annoying and inherently unlikeable, the writing itself is also frustrating. There are several email correspondences in each chapter that seem to go on far longer than necessary. The timeline shifts around randomly, bouncing around a period of about a year. I understand that McFadden is trying to amp up suspense and only give specific plot points away as they are necessary, but it’s hard to keep up with when events happen or how the timeline looks linearly.
Furthermore, there are several ambiguous references to some mysterious events in the past. Lots of “unless they know about… no, they couldn’t” moments. Those can be effective when they’re done properly, but you can’t be so heavy handed about it. McFadden has no concept of subtlety, and it reads like some high schooler’s fan fiction rather than a critically acclaimed novel.
The only marginally redeeming quality of this book is a particular twist. I didn’t expect it, but I’m also not one who can anticipate anything in most murder mysteries, so don’t take that as more of a compliment than it is. After the twist is revealed, the ending is reached in such an unlikely resolution that it almost makes me mad. Hey, let’s forget about the past few months and pretend that things are just peachy now.
At the epilogue, two characters remain with fairly substantial secrets about each other. I suppose that’s typical with this genre. The problem is I don’t like either character, and I don’t care about their secrets. Lots of people do lots of sleazy things to other people, and I felt no sensation of vindication or satisfaction. I’m just annoyed that I wasted a few hours of my life on such garbage.
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