The Breakdown

The Breakdown
By: B.A. Paris

I was a little over halfway through this book and I thought I would be giving it a bad rating when I finally finished. The plot revolves around the main character, Cass, struggling with her short-term memory and forgetting things, experiencing paranoia due to the local murder discovered. It got to feel quite repetitive and I just kept thinking 'Where are they going with this...?'

It seemed boring just reading Cass's day after day of all the things she forgot or worried about. But I pressed on and I'm glad I did. Without giving anything away, rest assured- the monotonous account of her forgetfulness has a purpose! Paris wraps it up fairly quickly at the end so it takes most of the book to get to the climax of the story. It was a good book and I liked the ending too.

My criticism would just be some annoyance at how Cass handled the situation. She endures a 'silent caller' she is sure is the murderer. I don't understand why she wouldn't have the calls traced or ask the police for her phone records- if it was that distressing to you, seems like you could have tried harder to get to the bottom of it, especially if you were convinced it was a murderer.

I also felt like a lot of her reactions and thought processes were irrational, over the top, and sometimes straight up stupid. But I guess if you are truly experiencing dementia or paranoia, or think you are, that might be how you actually react. I just wanted her to make better choices and to take action differently- but I suppose we wouldn't have a novel then!