A Year in the Life of Leah Brand by Lucinda Clarke review
A Year in the Life of Leah Brand covers just as the title suggests. It’s the worst year in Leah’s life with a mystery to unravel at the same time.
I got this book from Voracious Readers Only for free in return for an honest review.
Where to start with A Year in the Life of Leah Brand? The psychological thriller came out in May 2020, toward the start of the pandemic. It had an interesting premise, focusing on a woman who had gone through a devastating loss and ended up marrying for a second time potentially for the money.
I won’t say it was all for the money, but it’s hard to make that call. She had blown through her savings after moving away from her mom’s house and had to find a job when in comes Mason. He’s charming, he’s rich, and he offers stability. Why wouldn’t she take it?
The problem is I don’t know if she really does love him at any point in their relationship. I can’t even recall her saying she loves him throughout the book, focusing more on the present and the definite fact that she can’t love this man. He’s awful to her.
It all starts when Mason’s dog, Zeus, dies, and it all gets worse from there. And over-the-top worse. The whole idea is that she’s starting to feel like she’s going crazy. Things are happening in the house that nobody else experiences or sees. When she gets cameras to prove it, the cameras are removed or they don’t have batteries in.
A definite potential but a disappointing end
A Year in the Life of Leah Brand certainly has some potential. I’ll admit that I guessed some of what was going on. It was clear who was doing things to Leah, but the reason why wasn’t all that clear.
To be honest, the reason why came out of the blue, although I guess that was meant to be the case as we followed Leah’s story through her own eyes. If she didn’t know something then we’d never know it.
I won’t share why Leah was made to feel like she was going crazy, but keep money on your mind. It all comes down to money, which isn’t surprising when Mason goes on and on about it, as narcissistic, abusive men do.
It’s not actually the emotional abuse part of the story that is disappointing for me, although it does remind me a lot of The Secrets We Keep by Mia Hayes. It’s the lack of growth Leah has from start to finish. She doesn’t learn anything from what’s happened to her, with the epilogue making it clear that it could happen all over again.
You have to suspend some belief
Something I really wanted to see her do was end up with the dog that she gets from the shelter (and takes back the day after). I fixated on completely the wrong thing, but I would have loved to see her walk back in and say she got rid of the guy in her life and was now 100% willing to take this little dog.
However, I will also admit that the shelter should have done a hell of a lot more checks than just let Leah adopt this dog. This is just one of the examples of where you need to suspend belief.
This shelter lets Leah walk in with a picture of a dog so she can surprise her husband. Then she just walks out with a completely different dog. There are no checks, no need for anyone else in the house to meet this dog, and no application filled out. She just gets to walk away with the dog on the first visit.
From experience in adopting dogs, that wouldn’t happen. At least, it shouldn’t happen. This is why dogs end up getting sent back to shelters.
Another suspend-the-belief moment is Leah not once thinking about divorcing Mason for the way he treats her. She just takes it and works partly on building her self-confidence. In the end, it makes sense why she might not want to divorce him, but there’s just never a mention of it—even a mention of “I couldn’t possibly do that.”
So, yeah, some moments made me irrationally angry and upset.
A Year in the Life of Leah Brand just didn’t quite hit the mark
This is one of those books that has you guessing from start to finish. You know who is doing the actions, but you’re not sure why. That can sometimes be a lot more entertaining.
At first, it looks like it’s just because Leah is in an abusive relationship. There are no hints to why Leah is made to feel crazy throughout as we see it all from Leah’s perspective. That is until the end when there’s a very quick explanation.
The explanation isn’t fully predictable, and I’ll give Clarke that. However, it’s rushed, which makes it disappointing. We just get snippets of each month in Leah’s year, and it’s not really enough to fully understand why she hasn’t grown as a character.
Star rating: 3.5 stars out of five.
Next. The Woman in the Woods by J.E. Rowney review. dark