I Let You Go - Book Review

It was only few weeks back that I happened to land on a random blog post with a list of book recommendations for mind blowing plot twists. Out of the 37 suggestions I was glad to remember this title and was quite surprised to come across the book in the library. Even after few days since I have finished reading the book I still can't stop thinking about it. “I Let You Go” by Clare Mackintosh was truly a gripping story with mind blowing plot twists and I will try my best to not write any spoilers of it in my review.

No matter wherever you live, news of road accidents will be plenty for you to come across daily. How do we react to such news? I’m sure that we wouldn’t hesitate even for a few seconds to sympathize the victims who are badly injured or worse dead and criticize/curse the drivers whose carelessness cost lives. Have we ever thought of putting ourselves in their shoes and imagine how they might be feeling about it? No doubt that we would try to imagine the victim’s loved ones but what about the person with guilt? Will they remain the same regardless the legal conditions they have to go through?

Jacob Jordan is a 5 years old, happy little boy who would love to race to his home on the way back from school. Everything was just as normal it could be on any other day, so his mom loosen her grip of him for a moment so that little Jacob could be himself, the little bundle of excitement and energy. In a split second everything changes and Jacob’s lifeless body would be over the road and his mom would never be able to forgive herself for letting him go. With that, opens a hit-and-run case for the CID to follow, with hardly any leads to support them and a mother is unable to come out of her grief and guilt for letting this happen that she runs away, unable to keep herself steady in this turmoil.

From the beginning itself I was cautious about the plot twists. Unintentionally I was having doubts on certain characters and incidents but never ever I would have guessed the real plot twist in the story. It shook me hard and left me all flabbergasted! Something I found special about the book is its narration. I believe that the writer has pulled in a real stunt by entwining the story by three different point of views. I was amused how meticulous the three narrations have been used to make the content rich and exciting while maintaining a good flow with all the incidents well linked and mixed without any repetition. The characters were fine tuned so as the surroundings that it was so indulging. One wouldn’t have even the faintest idea that they would be spun around the next moment. The language is smooth, descriptive and ever so convincing. You will practically feel like living in the story soaking to the whirlwind of all emotions. It not only addresses an aftermath of a tragic accident but also the hullabaloo of family life.

This is the type of book which urges you to read it once again so that you could check for the places where you missed the hints which could have alarmed you to not get carried away by the things we see just on the surface. I would recommend it to anyone who is eager to read a psychological thriller and has enough time to savour each and every moment of it rather than hurrying through the pages. Ending the note with a quote from the book. It sure won’t give you a clue about the story but something to remember always.

“You can tell a lot about people by the way they treat animals”