“The Elizas” by Sara Shepard – A Book Review

We all live in the busy world and every day we make choices that sometimes we are either proud of or regret at the end looking back to the time we lost on them. So as to save you some time in selecting your next book and not regret your choice I decided to make this review of one the recent books I’ve read.

“The Elizas” is a novel written by Sara Shepard who you might know by her other works such as “Pretty Little Liars” series which were adapted into the famous and successful TV show a few years back. Personally I didn’t know this author until I read “The Elizas” and I didn’t know that she was the one to write “Pretty Little Liars” in the first place as I have never read the series, I only saw a few seasons of the show. So the connection between the two never occurred to me when I got my hands on the book by accident. Thus it would help me to stay objective when I give my assessment.

“The Elizas” leads you through a story of the young woman named Eliza Fontaine who suffered a brain tumor surgery when she was still a girl and it had inevitably imprinted on the quality of the life she’d been living ever since. As Eliza left her teens and entered into the womanhood she produced a fictional book about a girl who also suffered from brain tumor. That’s when the crazy things start spinning around like a carousel. Memory losses, mixing up the events with something that may or may not have happened in reality, odd behavior of her family members that sometimes gives her and the readers the chills are only small crumbles of this cake that you will enjoy when reading this book. Moreover when Eliza is waking up on the hospital bed in the first pages of the book her family thinks she’s made another suicidal attempt on her life whereas Eliza herself is convinced that there was someone else to blame. The problem is no one is willing to believe her, so it’s up to her to prove them wrong.

What I liked about this particular story is the following:
You will be led by the desire to uncover the truth, whether everything is a work of Eliza’s mind or whatever is happening to her IS happening for real. That’s what I call a good suspense.

Main character is far from ideal and sometimes she’s very mean to everyone around. You’d think, what’s so good about it? I’d say, aren’t we all mean sometimes? This trait just makes her human and closer to being the real person with flaws.
It certainly doesn’t make her pretty likable but I don’t have to like the main character to enjoy the story.
There’s a really funny scene in the plastic surgeon’s office which you’ll recognize if you read the book. All I’m going to say is that the character who participated in the scene besides Eliza is a nice touch and a good addition to this book as he’s solely responsible for the lightening this gloomy story at least with a few bright colors.

As for the cons of the book, I can’t find any serious fault with it. The only disadvantage is a few cliché scenes with sudden disappearance of the person you thought you’ve seen just a moment ago, or a constant sense of presence of someone else around although you can’t see anyone there. That’s just as I said, cliché scenes. However, the fact that there are such scenes is not necessarily bad, you just recognize them as required attributes of the genre.

In the end let me add that I found this book interesting and I never regretted that I spent my precious time on it. Hopefully, if you read it too you’d feel the same, and if you still hesitate whether it’s worth reading, maybe my humble review may help you to make a decision.

Thank you for reading my post and I wish you a good day!