Author: Dani Atkins
Publisher: Ballantine
Rating: WARTY!
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration of any kind for this review. Since this is a new novel, this review is less detailed so as not to rob the writer of their story, but even so, it will probably still be more in-depth than you'll typically find elsewhere!
For those who don't like "bloated reviews" here it is in a nutshell:
Then and Always by Dani Atkins sucks!
You may go now if you wish, but for those who want to stay and discover why I think it sucks and what could have been done to make it a better novel, please do join me in my exploration!
Problem one: This novel starts out with a huge info-dump, which struck me as not only tedious, but also rather amateurish. What is it with book editors these days?! Atkins had an in with me, because I love these 'what if' novels: the time-traveling ones or the 'road not traveled' ones, so I was more inclined to give this some leeway than I would be ordinarily, but it still failed me because ultimately, in light of the ending, almost nothing in this novel made any sense. And trust me, it bears no relationship whatsoever to the movie Sliding Doors. I was completely betrayed by the sad trope of an ending. I kept thinking - no, the author can't really be selling her readers out like this can she? How did this ever get past the agent and the editor? I tell ya, the more novels I read, the less respect I have for Big Publishing™!
I have to add yet another note here about the employment of some wisdom in choosing a title for your novel (that's assuming you're given any choice by Big Publishing™!). This novel was originally titled Fractured in the UK, but renamed for the US, and wisely IMO, but because 'Fractured' was not a good choice of title, the author now has two completely different titles to deal with for the same novel. This name change made sense given how rare the title 'Then and Always' is (there is only one such title in Barnes & Noble and only one in Amazon, and they're both Atkins's novel), and how common the title 'Fractured' or 'Fracture' is (I counted nine such novels on the first page of results at Amazon, and thirty-one titles on the first page at B&N using one of those two words. I don't know who chose either of these titles, but Fractured was a really poor choice of title - that is unless you actually want your novel to disappear in a cloud of similar titles.
Please note up front that in order to describe the many issues I had with this novel, I'm going to have to post more spoilers than I typically do with a new ebook. So, the story begins with main character Rachel Wiltshire having a parting meal with high school friends during the dregs of their final summer before they all go off to university or to follow other paths. The group meets with tragedy in a car accident (which isn't quite what you might expect - so that was a nice twist).
Here's the second problem: The sad thing is not the accident but that, even at this early point in the novel, Rachel is portrayed as weak and clueless, and this seems to be an annoyingly consistent theme throughout the entire story. Why an author would deliberately choose to portray her main character as the worst of YA stereotypes, especially when this novel isn't YA per se is a mystery, but that's what she did. The problem here is Rachel's ineptitude: rather than simply climb over a chair or table to escape the oncoming vehicle, Rachel stands there completely lost like a child, and it's Jimmy (her best friend since the childhood which Rachel has evidently never left) who saves her at the apparent cost of his own life. So here we have Sir Galahad rescuing the damsel in distress. Just how weak do we want our hero? Or should I go with the author's flow and denigrate her as a heroine?
Rachel is so clueless that she has never realized that Jimmy is in love with her, and she's so inert that she has never once considered him as a partner or tried to develop a relationship with him. I found this to be about a mile past credibility and about eight blocks over. How Rachel ended-up with Matt rather than Jimmy is a complete mystery, but it does conveniently provide the lurve triangle - a triangle which contributed absolutely nothing to the story and which made zero sense in light of the novel's trite and tired ending.
Five years later, Rachel suffers a fall or a mugging. Yes, it's that confused. Quite frankly, I have no idea which of any of the accidents/misfortunes which supposedly befell Rachel actually happened and which did not, given the ending of this novel. Rachel wakes up to discover that her whole world has changed. In her old life, Rachel has hit her head whilst romping around in a graveyard after hours visiting the grave of dead Jimmy. ( Why the graveyard is locked up is a mystery. Do they think someone might get out?!) In her new life, she's mugged and she falls down goes boom, and wakes up in a hospital bed, which fortunately is in a hospital, but there reality ends for her.
Her dad shows-up without a trace of the encroaching cancer (which he had in the other life). She's even more confused when her father disagrees with her that he ever had cancer! But that's nothing compared with the shock to her system delivered by the appearance of dead Jimmy, very much alive and living as a police officer. Rachel's utter surprise over this results in her immediate sedation. What? Excuse me, but what?
This is yet another problem. Atkins seems to have some weird ideas about how doctors and nurses behave. The consistent trope in novels is, sadly, that doctors are all that and nurses are something else, doing nothing but turning down sheets and bringing in meals. This is another example of genderism in this novel. In reality this downgrading of the nurse isn't the case (and yes, I do know, because I've worked in more than one hospital). Obviously, hospitals in Britain differ from those in the US and my experience is all US-based, but they're not that dissimilar.
The two professions fulfill different but complementary rôles, and doctors rely on nurses just as much as nurses do on doctors. They're each part of the complete health-care team, which not only includes the X-ray techs, respiratory therapists, nursing assistants, and licensed practical nurses, if such a species exists any more in the wild, but also the ancillary staff such as clerks, transportation and heavy lifting teams, and yes, the janitorial staff. Writers tend to forget all this. In critical care units, the nurses often advise the doctors, since the nurses are the permanent staff in the units whilst the 'front line' doctors are typically just passing through on rotation.
Imagine my surprise then, when Atkins has the medical staff administering IV sedation to Rachel at every expression of surprise on her face! Seriously? My belief suspension bridge crashed bodily into the deep and jagged ravine of reality on that revelation. This is yet another problem with this novel. I have to admit though, that it was funny when Rachel asks, "Can anyone else see Jimmy in the room?". That did something to revive my faith in the story. Unfortunately, I lost it again when I read that five people come parading into Rachel's hospital room: her dad, Jimmy, Matt, Cathy, and Phil (who bizarrely disappears from the story after this). This is right after she's back from extensive tests and measurements which were ordered as a result of what was, to the medical staff a psychotic episode. I can’t imagine any decent hospital not restricting visitors to immediate family only when the patient is like that, and keeping those visits on a tight leash, so again, reality bites.
Reality took a deep dumpster dive when unrelated Matt almost literally orders Rachel's own father to leave and get some rest! We'd already been told at that point that visiting hours were over, so how unrelated Matt - her fiancé - figures he's going to stay here and what use he figures he'll be, is a bit of a conundrum. Unless, of course, he had an agenda, which he didn't. He couldn't have, given the ending.
The only real confusion over agendas though is Rachel's, as she responds warmly to kissing Matt! This is after she's spent the last five years (so we must assume, but who knows, given the novel's ending?!) living away from him and all but adopting the lifestyle of a nun: single and uninterested in men, having firmly pushed Matt from her own and into Cathy's arms. Are we now to believe that her resolve has simply vanished without a trace? Until I read that, I hadn’t thought that there was anything medically wrong with Rachel. Now I do! This is another example of how Rachel is portrayed as weak. The poor writing was only exacerbated when, immediately after the kiss, Rachel asserts her resolve to get back to her old life - which of course she abandons shortly thereafter! Evidently it's not only Rachel who's a bit confused about what's going on here!
I have to draw your attention at this point, to what a massive jerk Rachel's father is. I know that fathers are all-too-often portrayed as being at odds with their daughter (when they're not portrayed as being unrealistically perfect), or depicted as being over-controlling or lacking in understanding, and I don’t know if Atkins intended this, but this guy comes off as nauseatingly condescending. He treats his daughter like she's twelve and he makes no effort whatsoever to try and understand what she's going through. He operates solely from the blind assumption that she's not right in the head, and as such, he's her worst enemy. He's also clueless in cooking for her a large plate of over-cooked eggs the first morning after they get home. He says she needs to build up her strength, but she's been in hospital for only a couple of days. It’s not like she's just recovered from months of hospitalization for some debilitating wasting disease! Poor writing or just a bad dad? I know where my money is!
To be fair, her father isn't the only one who has a clueless attitude. Every person with whom she has any interaction during this period of her hospitalization and immediately afterwards, be it her friends, her father, her fiancé, the nurses, or the doctors, treats her like she's a child or like she's simply deranged. Not one single person tries to understand what she's going through, or to take her concerns, oddball as they may appear on the surface, seriously. I find this completely unbelievable. I also find it appallingly abusive of Rachel. If she were a male character, would the author have written this the same way?
The story's evident hero, Jimmy, explicitly tells Rachel that she needs someone to take care of her! I almost ditched the novel completely at that point. What a jerk he is, and what does it say about Rachel that she buys into his condescending and controlling bullshit so easily? What this tells me about Rachel is that she's not only spineless but also blind. It was only because this is a relatively short story that I decided to finish it at this point.
Rachel discovers that in this new life, she's a journalist who works for a magazine. She denies this and gives them the phone number and extension for a woman in human resources at the engineering firm she works at in Euston, London. Jimmy makes the call - to call in sick for her - and then Jimmy tells her that the place never heard of her. This entire interaction on the phone makes no sense in light of how the novel ends!
There are two problems here. The first is that Rachel inexplicably expects this call to prove her case, when she's already in a world where a dead guy has come back to life, and she's being consistently told by people she knows, that her life is not what she remembers. The second is that Rachel turns into a complete limp rag at Jimmy's announcement, and instead of taking the phone herself and calling to verify this, she limply takes Jimmy at his word and collapses into sobs.
This is the first hint we get that Jimmy is stage-managing everything. I lost all respect for Rachel at this point and worse than that, I lost respect for the author. The only consistent strength Rachel has exhibited to this point has been in asserting that she has a different life. Here was something concrete which she could check for herself, and she fails to do so, instead collapsing like improperly set jelly. Shame on the author for betraying her main character by rendering her in such a negative light - and as we've seen, this isn't the only time Rachel is depicted as a weak woman incapable of handling her own life. Maybe Jimmy is right about her, but if that's the case, then how did she ever manage to take care of herself for five years prior to this? Again, it makes no sense.
Matt is conveniently called out of the country on a trip to Hamburg, so when Rachel wants to visit her purported London residence, Jimmy takes her - like she's completely incapable of managing anything by herself. It's been a while since I've had such mixed feelings about a novel to the extent that I had for this one. Usually when I'm half-way through it I have a definite feeling, one way or the other about it. With this one I continued to be put off by so many negatives while at the same time still curious about where Atkins is going with it. I should have quit when I was ahead!
For example though this is set in Britain, Atkins has the characters using Americanisms. I know that US influence is pernicious throughout the world because of business interests and the wide-spread viewing of American-made movies, but I've never heard a Brit use the term 'bummer', nor have I heard a Brit refer to a loved one as "Hon" - short for 'Honey'. OTOH, it's been a long time since I've spent any time there, so maybe things have changed. It just struck me as weird. Atkins does get a lot of "British-isms" right, so I guess I have to trust the author on this. I mean, she uses 'lift' for the American 'elevator', 'windscreen' for the American 'windshield', 'flat' for the American 'apartment' and so on, so she seems to know what she's doing for the most part.
Om the other side of the coin it became ever harder to come up with an intelligent solution for what Rachel was experiencing other than the straight-up and boring psychotic break or the fact that she's lying in a coma in a hospital bed somewhere. Or the novel is simply badly written - which is what turned out to be the case above and beyond all "plot" ideas. It's not possible to bring back people from the dead or to magically cure cancer overnight, nor would it seem possible to find actors to play Jimmy and her own father which would fool Rachel, yet something like this is what would have had to have happened if Rachel's previous life had been real. This suggested that none of what I was reading was real. I guess Atkins's agent never advised her against writing stories that try to trick the reader by having the story all be a dream, or by having the patient wake up from a coma at the end, or some other variation on one or other of these tired themes?
One thing which does stand out is that Jimmy is a central orchestrating power of whatever it is which is going on now, pulling Rachel's strings like a professional puppeteer. You have to ask yourself, is Rachel quite simply so screwed-up in her head that half the time, she imagined her last five years to be different from what they actually were? As the saying goes, you're never alone with schizophrenia, but as I said, none of this makes any sense in light of the actual ending to this story.
The over-arching problem that I had was that Rachel was repeatedly treated like a helpless child by the author. As intrigued as I was by this story, I was increasingly annoyed at how Rachel is consistently depicted as weak and incompetent. For example, we learn that she has often broken down crying over Jimmy's death - and this is five years on. Get over it already! The problem here is that Rachel had had every chance to make a relationship with Jimmy and she failed to be proactive - another example of how weak and clueless she is. It makes no sense that having failed to pursue him when she could, she would be a snot-ridden heap of sobbing spinelessness five years later! Of course, if Jimmy was somehow controlling and manipulating her, then this is one of the few things which would make sense.
Here's another example: she has to visit a consultant who will help her work through her mental issues, and rather than imagine she'll visit him or her by herself, she finds herself wondering if Jimmy will accompany her, only to realize that Matt will be back by then, and so he'll take her. What is she, twelve years old that some adult guy has to hold her hand her everywhere? This is the same woman who was supposed to have been living by herself without any issues for five long years. Now she's suddenly so useless she can't do anything? It makes no sense, but then none of this novel does.
I do not like weak, helpless Rachel, and I see no reason why anyone should like her or want to read about her. Why would anyone care about a woman who has nothing going for her, who's a complete dependent, and who makes no effort whatsoever to take charge of her life or to grow, or to change? She doesn't even pretend that she's going to take the reins of her life, being quite content to be buffeted around by the three men, one of whom she actually believes she "belongs to"! I am simply not interested in limp, non-characters like that. I sincerely hope the author isn;t writing what she knows here; that would be sad. Once again, this all makes even less sense in light of how this sorry excuse for a novel ends.
I certainly didn't like the rather anti-feminist attitude casting a sorry shadow over this novel. Not only is Rachel routinely depicted as spineless, she's also routinely condescended by men. Jimmy, for example, introduces her as Miss Rachel Wiltshire to Mrs Louise Kendall at her office, like women have to be pigeon-holed and categorized, but men don't. Neither Matt nor Jimmy are married, but I don't see Atkins referring to them as Master Matt and Master Jimmy. So why is Rachel a Miss? Genderism, that's why.
Rachel has no sense of personal space either. She lets Jimmy touch her inappropriately without a word of objection. Worst of all, she thinks of herself as belonging to Matt - like Matt owns her - and this is after she has woken up believing she hasn't been even remotely intimate with either of them for five years! Why would she think she's Matt's property? Again it makes no sense. The fact that she evidently does think that very thing is yet another example of how women are portrayed as property in this novel, not as individual human beings with their own rights and entitlements. The more I read of that antiquated genderist attitude, the more nauseated I became by its pervasiveness, especially when these attitudes are deliberately encouraged by a female author!
I cannot rate this as a worthy read for the reasons I've stated, but even had I not had so many good reasons to dislike it, the ending alone would have validated my assessment. The ending is such a trite, cheap cliché that I couldn't believe any publisher would let this out, let alone any self-respecting author would write it! This isn't fan fiction after all. It's just written like it is.
