Give It Back is a debut novel focused on the story of three women, Ella and her elder sister Lorraine, who employs an au pair called Lexy. Slowly Ella gets to the bottom of the mystery surrounding the disappearance of Lexy and Lorraine’s son called Logan. The story is set in Seattle although Lexy comes from London.
I found Give It Back to be a frustrating read as the time frame keeps switching backwards and forwards. Each chapter is from the point of view of either Ella, Lorraine or Lexy and I quickly became confused. This was not helped by some chapters detailing things that that in later chapters had not happened yet. In the early pages it was very easy to get Ella and Lexy mixed up as their names at a quick glance can be mistaken and the author’s voice sounded the same for both characters. In a character-driven novel it is important to have strongly different voices for each character.
I thought the plot was poor, which led to further frustration. Give It Back became quite a jumble for me as there were no clear story lines. It was like trying to recall conversations after a drunken night out with a large group of friends.
At the end of the book, the title Give It Back comes into play. This was a disappointment but dwarfed by the very end, which was simply daft. I was left with a strong feeling of just what was going through the author’s head that made Danielle tell her story in this way. This mystery could have been told from very different angles so that it developed with a linear time-frame and engaged the reader with eclectic characters rather than these samey women.
Making allowances for Give It Back being a debut novel, I still think this is a POOR read and just gets 2 stars from me.
Give It Back was written in 2017 and is available as an Amazon Kindle eBook.
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