After She Wrote Him by Sulari Gentill

Released: April 2020 (Previously published as Crossing the Lines)
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Pages: 256
Rating: 4/5

If you get lost in a book, be sure you can find your way back.

From Amazon:

Madeleine d’Leon doesn’t know where Edward came from. He is simply a character in her next book. But as she writes, he becomes all she can think about. His charm, his dark hair, his pen scratching out his latest literary novel…

Edward McGinnity can’t get Madeleine out of his mind – softly smiling, infectiously enthusiastic, and perfectly damaged. She will be the ideal heroine for his next book.

But who is the author and who is the creation? And as the lines start to blur, who is affected when a killer finally takes flesh?

After She Wrote Him is a wildly inventive twist on the murder mystery that takes readers on a journey filled with passion, obsession, and the emptiness left behind when the real world starts to fall away.

An impressively executed story that packs a hell of a punch. I was worried that the premise would start to unravel when I realized how immediately intertwined the two plot lines were, but Sulari Gentill managed to write this book in a way that never once became confusing or hard to follow. It’s such a unique premise, one I’ve definitely never come across written quite this way before.

It started off strong, but I unfortunately found myself starting to lose interest after a few chapters because the dialogue seemed a tad immature and the characters were hard to connect with. It was disappointing because I was so eager to see how the story would continue to evolve. Luckily, the last third of the book was phenomenal so I’m glad I stuck with it. And that ending…whew!

By about the halfway point you can begin to see the writing between the lines and feel the impending implosion slowly building as you turn the pages. You know the feeling: that creeping yet delicious suspense something awful is about to happen and there’s nothing you as the reader can do to stop it. Much like the writers observing their characters in this story, there’s nothing you can do expect watch it play out.

I have to say that even though there were things I didn’t like about the author’s writing style, I’m still seriously impressed at how well this book was written. To be able to weave two storylines the way Gentill did is no small feat. That’s why if you find yourself struggling to connect with the characters at first, I urge you to stick with it because they do become much more relatable as the plot fleshes out. Plus the overall story is just so incredibly worth it! The climax of the book still has me shook several weeks after reading it.