Book review: The Girl Before by JP Delaney

The forty-fifth book I read in 2017 was The Girl Before by JP Delaney.  It was marketed as similar to The Girl on the Train, which was, eh, okay.  It was a page-turner, at least.

This book deals with two successive tenants of One Folgate Street, a minimalist house with a beyond-strict lease agreement.  Both Emma and Jane agree to a long list of rules, like changing nothing in the house or garden, never leaving clothes on the floor or objects out in the open, no smoking, no pets, no potted plants.  Jane has one further detriment to deal with: the previous tenant died in the house.

Both Emma and Jane are unreliable narrators, which can be done well but most of the time just comes off as the author yanking your chain.  This is one of those times and one of those books in which everything the book lets you know about pretty much every character turns out to be a lie.  It's just too much; you start wondering why you even bother reading the book if it's just going to jerk you around like that, and you stop caring, particularly when every character you try to empathize with turns out to be vile. 

In addition, I read this book after reading an article in the Wall Street Journal about a new trend in literature: authors using their initials to conceal their gender.  That's right; "JP" is a man, though he's trying very hard to come off as chick-lit.  I won't say that men can never write a novel with a female protagonist; but Delaney has not one but two, and his attempts to depict them in situations involving rape and pregnancy comes off as mansplaining, particularly given the deception he freely admits to using in his pen name.