I'll Be Seeing You

I’ll Be Seeing You – by Mary Higgins Clark

Overall I thought this was a pretty good book.  I’ve only read three or four by Clark, and all of her books sort of follow a similar pattern.  I end up enjoying her books, but the majority of what happens in each story doesn’t really stay with me for very long.  This is exactly how I felt when I finished this one as well. All of her books tend to be somewhat of the ‘mystery’ genre.  There’s usually a strong female protagonist, some strange things that happen, a serious crime occurring such as a murder or a kidnapping, the plot thickens and evolves, and then the eventual conclusion emerges.

This book focuses on a young reporter named Meghan Collins. One night Meghan is working her beat in a hospital when an ambulance pulls up with a DOA.  Meghan looks at the victim and sees that (GASP!) the victim looks EXACTLY LIKE HER!    Already I’m thinking, “Really?” “Seriously?”   Well, as the whole story unfolds, there are many moments like this throughout the whole story.  A lot of things happen that seem a bit silly and unbelievable.  But the main goal of a book isn’t necessarily to be believable, yet entertaining, and, again, this book was overall entertaining.

To be somewhat critical, the story is a bit too much like being on a mental roller coaster.  There are simply too many jarring revelations that are supposed to shock, yet simply made me roll my eyes in disbelief.  There are too many things going on in this story that make the reader have to focus on more that what seems completely necessary.  It felt like Clark began this story with a particular outcome in mind, and in order to get her story to the particular outcome, she worked out the rest of the story backwards.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing, in fact more authors should try this.  How many times have you read, what you thought was, a great book only to have a lame ending ruin it for you?  So to achieve her ending, it felt like she had to tell many sub-stories within her main story and it was a tad of a chore having to keep up with all of the characters and their different motivations. The book wasn’t necessarily hard to follow. No, the writing story was simple enough to where it was easy to keep up with most of the characters and their motivations, it just seemed like a lot of these subplots were unnecessary. 

I must also confess that I have no idea how the title of this book is relevant to the story; “I’ll Be Seeing You”  I don’t get the connection.  Well, that’s not important.  This book was a nice way to kill a quiet weekend despite some of the above-mentioned flaws.