Taryn Moore is a young co-ed, working toward her graduate thesis, with a bright future ahead of her. So when Detective Frankie Loomis is called to investigate Taryn’s possible suicide, it raises red flags. After speaking to Taryn’s close friends and family, they, along with most of the police force, believe it’s possible that Taryn killed herself. But when Frankie finds out that Taryn was pregnant, she starts to think something more sinister happened to the young college student. When another big secret of Taryn’s is revealed, Frankie knows she’s on the right track and soon Frankie and her partner, Mac, are turning over every corner of Taryn’s life- and not everyone likes what they find.
Choose Me is a domestic suspense novel, combined with a gripping police procedural. The novel is narrated from the perspective of Taryn, Frankie, and Jack (Taryn’s college professor), and is also told in reverse order, with Taryn’s death as the opening scene, and working backwards. As each character and time segment was clearly labeled and it was easily to identify when and who was speaking, I found this style added to the plot, and served to pull me deeper into the story.
Taryn’s focus of her college graduate thesis is the theme of scorned women in literature. Jack, her professor of English, also relies heavily in his teachings on the theme of women across literature who have paid the price for their passions. As an English literature fan, this was interesting enough on its own, but of course, this same theme ran not-so-subtly through Choose Me, which made the novel both relevant and thought-provoking. The entire theme of women paying the consequences for their feelings towards men is rampant throughout this novel, and it added realism to the twisty, unpredictable plot.
Taryn wasn’t extremely likable, but she did emit a sense of empathy. Jack, too, had his own charms underneath his fallibility, as he struggled with being a young college professor trying to start a family with his successful physician wife. Every character had their likable traits, and yet also managed to be equally unlikable, which made them intensely realistic and honest.
Each chapter ended with a page-turner that pulled me right in, and I wanted to devour this book from page one. The ending answered all the right questions, and delivered the satisfying conclusion I was hoping for. An emotionally charged page-turner that will definitely keep readers guessing, Choose Me has all of the twists and turns in the right places. Gerritsen and Braver are definitely the co-writing dynamic duo to look out for!
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