Title: Complicit Author: Stephanie Kuehn
Published: June 24, 2014
Genre(s): Mystery/Thriller, Realistic/Contemporary
Page Count: 256
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Trust nothing and no one as you race toward the explosive conclusion of the gripping psychological thriller Complicit from Stephanie Kuehn, the William C. Morris Award-winning author of Charm & Strange.
Two years ago, sixteen-year-old Jamie Henry breathed a sigh of relief when a judge sentenced his older sister to juvenile detention for burning down their neighbor's fancy horse barn. The whole town did. Because Crazy Cate Henry used to be a nice girl. Until she did a lot of bad things. Like drinking. And stealing. And lying. Like playing weird mind games in the woods with other children. Like making sure she always got her way. Or else. But today Cate got out. And now she's coming back for Jamie.
Because more than anything, Cate Henry needs her little brother to know this one simple truth: She's not the crazy one and never has been.
I try. I really do try. But it would be really nice if I don’t guess the outcome of every single mystery/thriller I read. From page one. Or, in Complicit’s case, all I had to do was read the jacket copy. Seriously, not even kidding. I read the back cover and knew what was going to happen.
Just once, I’d like to be wrong.
It’s not even like I had expectations about Complicit going in. I read no reviews, heard no buzz, and bought it only because it was extremely cheap. I have read Stephanie Kuehn’s debut, Charm & Strange, so I suppose I’m familiar with her storytelling and that could have contributed, but seriously. The ending was telegraphed 100 miles in advance.
This is not to say that Complicit wasn’t a good book—it certainly was. Kuehn’s sparing, tight prose is effective and clean, and she unwinds her plots in a way that is efficient but never so sparse as to create a sense of lacking. This author cuts right to what she needs to and doesn’t waste any time. This book has been trimmed of all excess, and it works. I think Kuehn has one of the more distinctive, mature styles that I’ve encountered in young adult fiction in recent months, and I’m all in admiration of what she can do.
However, I feel like a psychological thriller such as this relies on some level of suspense and/or mystery, so knowing exactly where Jamie was headed, what would happen once his sister returned from her stint in juvie and the two siblings resumed contact…it lessened my experience with Complicit. The sharp edges of this book were dulled because the element of surprise—the potential for it—was lost. It’s hard to emotionally invest in a story that holds no curveballs, be they in regards to plot or setting or characterization or prose.
Yet I don’t want to write this book off, because it’s good. It’s damn good. There aren’t many YA authors doing what Stephanie Kuehn does, nor doing it as well as she does. I don’t want to negate that. Perhaps Complicit suffers because it so clearly echoes Charm & Strange—it seems, certainly, that Kuehn has found a formula that works for her, though with her talent, I think she could easily attempt something new. Kuehn has done the “mental-illness, rich-white-boy, memory-loss” story twice now. She did it well; both Charm & Strange and Complicit were excellent. But I hope, at the same time, this author doesn’t use it as her crutch, doesn’t go back to it time after time. I don’t think she needs to rely on the familiar to write a successful novel. Because, in the end, Complicit, for all its strangeness and shock-value, goes back to what the author’s already written, spins her old themes just a little bit differently. It’s a great book, and I think it’s special and gripping and tough. But it wasn’t the best.
