Chasing Ghosts

 

How well do we truly know anybody? Even our spouses. That's the question Aaron Decker finds himself asking after his wife Alison is gunned down during a random attack on a strip mall. And Malfi doesn't waste any time letting us know he didn't really know his wife at all.

After Alison is killed, Aaron is going through her things when he stumbles across a gun, among other things, that makes his wonder what his wife was up to. Aaron let's the reader know his wife wasn't a fan of having guns in the house, yet here he finds that she possessed one. He finds receipts, notes, and names of dead girls, teens, that go back a number of years. That in and of itself isn't strange given that his wife was a reporter. The part that makes it strange is his wife covered community events, and nothing that she was working on would have required her traveling out of state, yet evidence suggests that's just what she was doing. Was she having an affair? Or had she been involved in something darker, more sinister, than he would have thought her capable of doing. So what starts out as a little mystery he feels compelled to solve in order to give his wife and himself some peace becomes an obsession, and soon Aaron is chasing shadows, the past, and ghosts, to find out what his wife was involved with. I try to keep my reviews spoiler free, so I'm not going to go into any more detail, because to do so would giving away some of the secrets Aaron discovers during the course of his investigation.

Come with Me is, above all else, a mystery, but it's also a ghost story and dare I say... UGH!... a love story, and Malfi has woven an intricate web that we, along with Aaron, need to untangle. And being that the story is told first person, we, the readers, are not given any insights ahead of time. Our discoveries are made at the same time Aaron unveils them, so it makes us feel like we're part of an investigative team. Frank and Joe Hardy. Sam and Dean Winchester. And as we investigate, Malfi has thrown in enough red herrings that we come to suspect Alison, Aaron, and many of the other characters we encounter along the way. Personally, I thought I had the whole thing wrapped up a little over half way through, but my suspicions turned out to be wrong.

From the very beginning, we know next to nothing about Aaron or his wife, and by the end of the book, we still don't really know Aaron, but you feel like you do because of all the stuff you've gone through with him, thus reinforcing the theme of how well do we really know anybody. We learn things about Alison as well, but when all is said and done, even though layers have been peeled away, we still don't know the true Alison and why she kept the secrets and told the lies she did.

Reading Come with Me was part of an experiment for me. I've recently tried listening to audiobooks since I had a free trial of Audible, and anybody who knows me know I don't like having people read to me. Never have, since I was a kid. And of the first few books I listened to, I retained nothing. I know the titles, the authors, and, in one case, the narrator, but ask me what the books were about, and I couldn't begin to tell you. Malfi's novel was a totally different experience. From the very first chapter I was completely and totally engaged with the narrative. Was it the narrator, who, by the way, did a wonder job? Or was it the fact that the narrative was first person? I don't make it a habit of re-reading books either, but I might re-read the physical (or Kindle) edition of the book to see if I'm as engaged as I was when I read King's Dolores Claiborne. That book, too, was written in the first person, and as I was reading it, I could actually envision myself sitting in a room with this woman listening to her talk. It was like she was talking directly to me. And in the case of Malfi's novel, since it was an audiobook, it was truly like Aaron was talking directly to me, even though he sprinkled Alison's name enough to remind us he wasn't talking to us, but to his dead wife.

My only issue with the book, and there's always one (at least), is the ending. I HATED the ending, and I'm not going to reveal why because, again, it would give too much away. Had the story been told third person, I don't feel the ending would be as much an issue for me as it was, but don't let that dissuade you from reading this intriguing, haunting novel. You might not have an issue with it, and based on people I've talked to, it seems I'm the only one to take issue with it. Come with Me could easily have been a five star read, but that ending... It's worth a whole star off for me, so it's a solid four star read, but still highly recommended.