I Don’t Like Mondays by Maria Frankland
There’s a bit of a story behind how this book got chosen, so bear with me. Me and a group of friends who all met through booktok, have a WhatsApp group where we talk about books and also lots of other stuff, but it centres around books. Each month, we decide to do a group read. This month, we each picked a genre and put it in a spinny wheel, as we usually chose a Dark Romance read and wanted something different. These were the genres up for grabs: Thriller, Gothic Horror, Rom Com, Romantasy (this was my genre), Cowboy Romance and Erotic Horror.
Thriller was the genre that the wheel chose, and then we each had to put forward a thriller book to go into another wheel. These were the choices:
- Pitch Black by Elise Noble
- I Know You Did It by Sue Wallman
- You May Now Kill The Bride by Kate Weston (This was my pick)
- Everyone In The Group Chat Dies by L.M. Chilton
- When She Returned by Lucinda Berry
- I Don’t Like Mondays by Maria Frankland
The wheel chose I Don’t Like Mondays. It was on Kindle Unlimited, which was great, and after I finished the book I was reading, I jumped straight in.
The book follows Cathy, who wakes up in a hospital to find she has been in a coma after being pushed in front of a train. Cathy can not remember anything from the past 10 years. She can’t remember her husband or her kids.
So the writing was okay, it was easy to read and follow. It didn’t take long to read. I will say, as someone who was in a coma for 3 weeks, the author had done her research, as she was correct in how Cathy couldn’t speak when she first woke up and the physical therapy you have to do as you lose all your strength. I was very happy with how she portrayed it. However, the story itself was mediocre to me; it is marketed as a claustrophobic psychological thriller, which to me would mean twists and turns, suspense and a book that keeps you guessing. That was not this book, it was predictable, it didn’t have me thinking “oh no, what’s going to happen” or going “well dang, I didn’t expect that.” In fact, when I finished, I messaged my friend and we were both like “really? that was why she did it!” The book, in my eyes, had potential but fell flat. I gave the book 3 stars because it was easy to read and the author had done her research. It just didn’t have that grip the edge of your seat factor for me.
Have you read this? If so, what did you think?
