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Title: The Double Bind
Author: Chris Bohjalian
Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Mystery, Twisty
Audience: Adult
Format: Paperback
Content Warning: Sexual Assault
My Review:
Written December 7, 2008
There’s not really much I can say about this without giving anything way. The tension relentlessly builds all the way through to an amazing ending that left me flipping back through the pages to see what I had missed. The clues were there, but I hadn’t seen them. I do highly recommend this one.
Update July 30, 2023
This book still regularly crosses my mind. I don’t remember a lot of details (not unusual for me) but I do remember the ending and it is still one of my favorites.
My Synopsis:
The Double Bind opens with a flashback. Laurel Estabrook is out biking one day when she is viciously attacked by two men. Luckily, another group of bikers come along and saves her before anything too violent happens. Fast forward a few years and Laurel is a social worker at a homeless shelter. One of the shelter’s clients has just died, leaving behind amazing photos of celebrities, the area Laurel grew up in, and a girl biking in the woods. Laurel is intrigued and tries to find out exactly who Bobbie Crocker was. All she finds are cover-ups and denials, but she single-mindedly persists in her search for the truth.
Similar Books:
If you liked The Double Bind, you might also like my reviews of
- Goodnight Beautiful by Aimee Aimee Molloy, read by Val Toomey, George Newbern, Marin Ireland, and Joel Froomkin
- Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
- The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly
Purchase:
Buy The Doube Bind from Malaprop’s Bookstore in beautiful Asheville, NC or
6 Comments
I go back through my blog every now and then and read my comments and reviews. I was so much more thorough I think, back then. I sometimes update the posts so they will show on the web just to see how many readers click on them.
Harvee at https://bookdilettante.blogspot.com/
I agree. My reviews were much better 10 years ago. I just don’t make the time to take the same amount of notes I used to.
It’s always so interesting to see what we think of books in the moments after finishing them versus if they stuck with us years later. This sounds like a good one.
It’s funny how I can never predict which ones will stay with me.
I’d like to do a weekly or monthly feature like this. I would like to think back on books from the past and reflect on them.
I’ve just gotten so far behind on writing reviews that I’m pulling old reviews from GoodReads. Lesley’s Book Nook does a semi-weekly post where she posts reviews from her old journals and adds her current thoughts.