I'm Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read this on a dare.

And because I didn't have much of anything invested one way or another in anything about it, I'm going to warn you now...

SPOILERS are ahead.

First, the good. There's a lot of good and if it wasn't for the really big thing that I don't like about this, I'd love to read more by this guy. Atmosphere and tension is pretty top notch. So is the foreshadowing. Lots of great ideas on those checkboxes, too. The WRITING is quite decent. For this, I'd give it five stars.

And now? The BAD.

From the title alone I thought it was going to be about suicide. Check. From almost the very beginning of the book, there were too many not only SIMILAR events going on between the narrator and Jake, but the SAME events. That pretty much tipped me off in the first 10% where things were going.

Of course, that might have been a great tool to use as a red-herring. But no. The book was predictable from the very start, even though it had to rely on us not being sure to keep our interest high. Date night? See the parents? Get ice cream? See where he went to school? SURE.

And all these little hints, especially the psychology tidbits, the philosophy tidbits, even the science ones, all of it pointed to the same thing. Ignore the pictures, the ginormous coincidences, the many slips of the tongue. lol

This book was utterly predictable, but that wouldn't have been a problem if it had given us a big way out, a twist or three, or a supernatural end.

Nope, in this case, we have the second worst ending anyone could give us in a book, and I'm not talking about, "And he woke up. It was just a dream."

I'm talking about the other one. With the S-word.

Solipsism.


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