“A failed actress turned grifting psychic searches for her missing doppelgänger and is plunged into a web of murder and corruption among Hollywood A-listers.”
The Divide, Morgan Richter
Looking for a book with a lying psychic, a dead director, and a missing painter? Then you might want to give this a try!
This book had so much potential, and I was fully invested in the first half. But things went downhill quickly plot-wise, and I was left wondering why I’d cared about any of the characters in the first place. As I followed Jenny, the narrator, through a series of bizarre events, it was impossible to tell if I was reading a psychological thriller or a poorly-paced murder mystery.
The opening chapters established a very LA cast of characters with varying degrees of wealth and importance. They all interact with Jenny in very LA ways, treating her almost like an assistant more than a person. In turn, Jenny tries her best to stay useful so they’ll keep her around. As she digs further into the bizarre mystery of Serge’s death, things get more vague and Jenny becomes more unreliable. There were enough twists and turns to keep me intrigued, desperate to get answers.
As Jenny’s background started to be revealed, I found myself even more invested. Jenny was from a small town in Iowa, about an hour from Sioux City, which is the exact sentence I’d use to describe where I grew up. Jenny had never felt like she belonged in the small town she lived in, and started planning on leaving when she was in high school, which is also how I’d describe my final years in Iowa. When she finally returns to the town, 20 years after she left, I thought it would be a pivotal moment for the story, and for my emotional connection to Jenny. Instead, her return to her small town marked the beginning of the plot’s downward spiral.
I won’t spoil the ending at all, but I was ready to give this four stars until the final few chapters. The murder mystery parts of this book followed the classic formula, complete with clever twists and turns. I enjoyed following Jenny as she unearthed clue after clue. And then, just when everything should’ve been wrapped up, we were left without any closure on the psychological thriller half of the plot. The amount of ambiguity and “ooh, what really happened” changed this book completely. It ended without addressing some of the biggest questions in the book, which made it feel like Richter never had an answer to begin with. To be dragged along for a final 100 pages and get an ending of “lol creepy, we’ll never know what was true” really annoyed me.
Read with Fern 
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