SUNBURN by Laura Lippman

I've waited to long to read more books by the popular Laura Lippman, and this one seemed right up my alley. Lippman's set-up is classic pulp noir: a drifter meets a sexy redhead with a mysterious past in a sleepy small town diner and they embark on a relationship that they both know probably won't be the healthiest one. What takes the book down even more fascinating paths is that we get not one, not two, but numerous unreliable narrators. Each character's past starts to be revealed, but not just through their point of view, but the POV of others around them as well. We not only start to learn their history but we learn that they're also harboring secrets as well, and as the reader, we struggle to figure out what is true and what isn't.

He knows everything about her. the hard part has been keeping track of what he's supposed to know and what she has yet to tell him.

It makes for very engaging reading, making this one of the more interesting reading experiences I've had this year. For the first half of the book, I couldn't wait to keep reading to see where the story would take me.

Then, coming up near the end of the novel, I began to suspect that it wasn't really taking me anywhere. The pace slowed down significantly, and by the end, my fears were confirmed. Not much actually happened here, at least not anything that lived up to the promise of the first half. The book was fine but not as amazing as I was hoping, especially with the great character work that Lippman featured here.

GRADE: B