A Simple Favor by Darcey Bell

I bought A Simple Favor on a whim when I saw that it was being made into a movie featuring Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively. Well, technically when Blake Lively deleted everything from her Insta as a sort of promo for the movie. Besides, it was a psychological thriller, and that is right up my alley. I wanted to make sure that I read it before watching the movie. The book is almost always better than the movie, so I never want the movie to have a negative effect on if I read a book or not. Now, I am uncertain about seeing the movie (although I am sure I still will).

(Source: Kelsey Darling)

When Emily asks Stephanie to pick up her son, Nicky, from school, Stephanie thinks nothing of it. However, when Emily has not checked in or picked him up, she begins to worry. This is very unlike her best friend. By the next morning, Stephanie is in a frenzy. She even breaks down and calls Emily's husband, Sean, who is currently in London for business. Sean is not worried then, but when he arrives back home and there is still no word from Emily, police are called, searches commence, and a body is found. The DNA confirms it, Emily is dead. But why do Nicky and Miles (Stephanie's son) say they saw her at recess? Could she actually be alive? What do you do when you find out that the woman that you call your best friend has secrets that she never told you, even when you have told her your deepest, darkest secret?

I was a little worried that this book would be too much like Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train. While it has some hints of those books in it, it does stand on its own.

(Source: Giphy)

I did find the character of Stephanie extremely annoying. Emily and Sean refer to her as a "Captain Mom." You know the type: only feed their kids grain free, gluten free, sugar free, taste free food; hover over the kid every second of every day; vet every parent, child, and pet that comes into their child's lives; frets when the kid does not get full marks in finger painting. She also writes a mommy blog, only she only tells half the truth in it, if that. Most of it is lies and bullshit, because god forbid she not look like the perfect mom, even though her blog is about not being a perfect mom. I hate hypocrites, and it was clear early on that she is one.

Okay everyone, if you want the book/movie to be a surprise, stop reading. Right now. I am going into spoilers territory. I am going to talk about all of the nasty little secrets. I usually try not to, but the issues I have with the book all revolve around the secrets that Stephanie and Emily have kept. This is your last warning. Spoilers will begin in the next paragraph.

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These are the issues I have with the book: incest, insurance fraud, sleeping with your "dead" best friends husband, helping someone commit spice, and lying about domestic abuse. Since some of these issues are less severe, I am going to go over them from least to most offensive, in my opinion.

Insurance fraud. Okay, if this was real life, this is a major issue. I worked in insurance for over three years and would always take it seriously when people would joke about me making their premium cheaper, or them skimming some of the details of a claim. It is hard for me to agree with this part of the book, but there is no plot without it. Emily is just doing it because it is fun and dangerous, not because she needs the money.

Sleeping with your "dead" best friends husband. So the time line is not very clear in the book, but it sounds like it might be told over six months. I do not know how much time passed between Emily being declared dead and Stephanie moving in, but it has to be less than six months. I am sure it happens in real life. And if more time had passed, it could even be considered reasonable. They were "best friends" and their sons were best friends and it made it easier for Sean with work to have Stephanie around to take care of Nicky. But you slept with your best friends husband. You had a crush on him before she was even declared dead!

"But I definitely did not blog about how Sean was so much taller and better looking and attractive than I remembered. To be honest, I felt disloyal for even noticing....

Which is all to say that I wasn't predisposed to like him. But since Emily disappeared, I've begun to sympathize with and respect him. It feels good to talk about Nicky. I like knowing that Sean trust me enough to ask what I  think about how his son is doing, about what we should tell Nicky. It's a compliment because it must mean he admires how I'm raising Miles.

There's something sexy about being in a state of perfect harmony with an extremely handsome single dad but the husband of my disappeared best friend." (p. 48)

It really bothered me that her friend is not even dead yet here and she refers to him as "single." She also masturbates while thinking about him before they actually get together. There is one part that was just too kinky for me. It takes place after she has moved in and her and Sean are in a weird sort of relationship. She tries on some of Emily's clothes, sits on the bed, pictures herself as Emily, and masturbates while thinking about Sean watching Emily masturbate. If that sounds confusing, that is because it is. And it is weird. Although I could never sleep with someone that a friend has slept with, let alone a guy they were married to and had a child with. So maybe I am not messed up enough to understand the appeal here.

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Okay, the next three are all ranked together as just plain wrong.

Incest. Stephanie has an affair with her half-brother, Chris, on and off from the time she is 18, and Chris is more than likely the father of her child, Miles. The only thing that makes it less disgusting (and I use that lightly), is that she did not know he existed until after her fathers death when she was 18 and he came to visit. But it was not like they did not know they were related and found out afterwards. They knew of their familial relationship the first time they had sex. Her husband, Davis, semi-confronts her about the relationship with her half-brother. He also may have committed suicide because of it, and took Chris out with him. The two died in a car accident when Davis drove off the road to supposedly avoid a collision with another vehicle. He left a torn up photo of Stephanie and Chris for Stephanie to find, leading to the conclusion that he probably took their lives on purpose.

(Source: Giphy)

Helping someone commit suicide. This one makes me sick for a few reasons. One of Emily's secrets is that she has a twin, Evelyn. While Emily at one point in time partied a lot, she cleaned up her life. Evelyn however continued down that path of destruction. One night, she calls Emily and tells her that she wants to die. For the most part, Emily is upset by the news. She tells Evelyn to wait until she can get to the lake house in Michigan, which Evelyn does. Emily admits to Evelyn that she is trying to commit insurance fraud by faking her death. Emily does not have to say it, Evelyn knows. If Evelyn, her identical twin, dies, it will look like Emily is dead. Evelyn, the next morning, has decided she has changed her mind and wants to live. Emily is happy about it, but she also tells Evelyn they should have one last hoorah. Once Evelyn is beginning to slip into a drunk and high hysteria, she changes her mind and wants to die again. Evelyn goes out for a swim and Emily does nothing to stop her. Emily even gives her a ring that Sean had given Emily so that it would be found on her body. She mourns and says that she never loved anyone the way she loved Evelyn. But this is what makes me believe that Emily is a sociopath (other things happen later that confirm this, but this was the first big thing for me). If you love someone, you do not help them commit suicide (I am not going to get into doctor assisted suicide because that is not the case here). There is no one that I love or hate so much that I would help and be okay with them committing suicide. I would not be able to live with myself. 

Lying about domestic abuse. This one makes my blood boil. Women and men are coming forward every day about physical, mental, financial, emotional, and sexual abuse they have faced at the hands of someone who they believed loved them. I want to believe all of them. But I also know that there are people out there that lie about it to get out of trouble with something else, just like Emily did. When Emily realized that she was not going to get away with insurance fraud and she was too mad at Sean for sleeping with Stephanie to continue being with him, she starts telling people; Stephanie even announces the abuse on her mommy blog. Every time someone lies about this, it sets back all of the cases where it is true. Even typing these words, I am angry typing them, punching down the keys hard enough that I am worried they will pop off. But this is not a subject that can be glorified, and I feel that that is what happens in the book. Everything else I could have written off as Emily's sociopathic behavior. But in today's political climate with people coming forward every day about abuse they have faced, this is not something that can be written about lightly.

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Had the last two topics not happened, or even if the suicide been played down by Evelyn committing suicide before Emily could save her, I could have enjoyed the book more. But for me, personally, these are subjects that I am sensitive too. I have known too many people to lose their battle with depression, or those survive a suicide attempt but are still trying to live each day. And I have known too many people who have faced abuse of every type. It is hard for me to enjoy a book completely when these topics are glorified, in my opinion. I may be looking too deeply into it. I also know that this is what literature is supposed to do: make you think. A controversial book should either open up another way of thinking, or it should reconfirm your beliefs. This one reconfirms my beliefs. I do want to see the movie still, but more because I want to see how they incorporate all of these horrible secrets and if they will change any of the darker aspects of it.

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Rating: 4/10
Author: Darcey Bell
Genres: Thriller, Mystery, Suspense
Dates Read: September 10-13, 2018