REVIEW: The No-Show by Beth O’Leary
The No-Show by Beth O’Leary
Blurb Time:
Siobhan is a quick-tempered life coach with way too much on her plate. Miranda is a tree surgeon used to being treated as just one of the guys on the job. Jane is a soft-spoken volunteer for the local charity shop with zero sense of self-worth.
These three women are strangers who have only one thing in common: They’ve all been stood up on the same day, the very worst day to be stood up – Valentine’s Day. And, unbeknownst to them, they’ve all been stood up by the same man.
Once they’ve each forgiven him for standing them up, they are all in serious danger of falling in love with a man who may have not just one or two but three women on the go….
Is there more to him than meets the eye? Where was he on Valentine’s Day? And will they each untangle the truth before they all get their hearts broken?
So, when I first read the blurb, sometime before starting the book, I made a few assumptions. Rereading the blurb, it’s clear that to some degree I didn’t read closely enough, because one of the assumptions was that this was going to be “three women get together and get revenge on the cad who broke all of their hearts”, which is actually not indicated. As the blurb states, each relationship continues for some time after the standing-up in the beginning of the book, and in fact for the majority of the book none of the three even knows about the other two.
Siobhan is stood up on a morning coffee date with Joseph, who before the date had been her monthly friends-with-benefits when she came to London for business (Siobhan is based in Dublin). Events in her past have made Siobhan slow to trust and she prefers to avoid relationships, which is why she kicks herself (metaphorically) for even making the effort to dress up for a coffee date, only to have Joseph not show up.
Miranda is starting a new job on Valentine’s Day, having to negotiate the usual awkwardness with new co-workers who tend to be all male and not necessarily comfortable with a female colleague. One of them, A.J., has a reputation with women and immediately hits on Miranda. She leaves work early to meet her boyfriend Carter for lunch, but Carter never arrives and doesn’t respond to her calls or texts.
Jane has to attend an engagement party on Valentine’s Day, and she asks her friend to come with her and pretend to be her boyfriend; both to fend off questions from an obnoxious acquaintance who is always trying to set Jane up, and because Jane is very shy and awkward in company. It’ll be much easier if her friend, Joseph Carter, is with her. Unfortunately, he never shows up.
Because of the unusual plot structure, I find myself having trouble working out how exactly I felt about The No-Show.
In its favor for me, like all of O’Leary’s books, The No-Show is extremely readable. Anyone who knows my reviews knows I value readability highly (sometimes to a fault; occasionally I’ve struggled to grade a book that was both a page-turner and also kind of dreadful). The plot here breezed along, with the story being narrated in alternating chapters by Siobhan, Miranda and Jane.
The three women are distinctly different types. Siobhan is a former aspiring actress, confident and successful in her current career. She had a bad breakup with her last boyfriend, which makes her wary of getting into another relationship, but she has a lot of close friends, the closest of whom is her longtime roommate and bestie, Fiona. Siobhan is the glamorous one of the three protagonists.
Which makes Miranda the “normal” relatable one. Sure, she’s chosen an unusual career, climbing trees for a living, but she’s emotionally healthy and has a good relationship with her family (including her 18-year-old twin sisters, who have moved in with her). Miranda thinks she has a good relationship as well with her boyfriend Carter, even though there are times she feels that something is missing.
Jane is…sort of a sad sack. I feel harsh saying that, but Jane is processing a mysterious trauma that caused her to flee her life in London and move to Winchester, where she volunteers at a charity shop. Her source of income is unclear. She is living a very proscribed life (she wears the same clothes every week, and eats the same breakfast every day) in the belief that she will somehow be “safe.” Jane doesn’t think she has friends until she meets Joseph Carter (they frequent the same coffee shop) and ends up in friendship/two-person book club with him. She first tells Joseph she has a boyfriend, so even though there are definite vibes between them, they are platonic.
I liked all the female protagonists (even though I kind of wanted Jane to get over being a drip and deal with her trauma, whatever it was). Joseph/Carter/Joseph Carter was the problem in the story. He’s either a heartless bastard or the great guy he mostly appears to be, but how to reconcile the two? Is he actually identical triplets who all share a name and the same poor time-management skills? (Spoiler: no, that’s not it.)
In retrospect I tried to think of how I would feel if I thought of The No-Show as a mystery. But it wasn’t a mystery, and I find it hard to apply the rules of a mystery to a book that while not a romance, had at its heart three romantic relationships. It was just hard not to focus on the journey and not the resolution, when the resolution was such a big question mark.
The author’s last book, The Road Trip, also featured a plot where the reader doesn’t learn everything that transpired until late in the book. I’m not totally opposed to that sort of plot, but The No-Show takes it to extremes, with instances of intentional misdirection. Which, again, is the sort of thing I expect more from a mystery or thriller.
I did guess pretty much how this story was going to shake out about 75% in. Which created another problem, the discussion of which would be a big spoiler.
Spoiler: Show
There were also some inconsistencies that I don’t think had to do with misdirection – chiefly having to do with Miranda and Carter’s relationship. She seems to mostly think he’s too good for her, I guess because he’s more polished and in a white collar profession. But later in the book she thinks about how she wants him to get himself together, and that surprised me because it seemed to cast him in the opposite light.
So, pluses: O’Leary is a funny, engaging writer, and the story was compelling. The three main female characters were likable as were several secondary characters (especially Miranda’s sisters and the friends that Jane does end up making/realizing she had all along in the course of the book). Minuses: the structure of the story and a plot development late in the book.
I gave The Flatshare an A, The Switch a B+ and The Road Trip a B-. Maybe more than other authors, I compare O’Leary’s books to each other, perhaps because I’ve read them in fairly close succession over the past couple of years. The Flatshare is still the gold standard. I probably found The Road Trip a bit more compelling than The No-Show, but it also had hugely problematic character issues that brought the grade down. This book is pretty comparable to The Switch, but because of the problems I’ve mentioned with the plot, I think I’ll give it a straight B.
Best,
Jennie
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I’ve been hearing good things about this book, primarily that most of us made the same assumption, and many were pleasantly surprised. I will definitely add this to my library list. Thanks.
I read this in one 24 hour period and then deleted it from my library. I don’t like being tricked by the author (you say “plot twist,” I say “manipulative deception.”) My enjoyment of her books has steadily gone downhill since The Switch. I’ll approach future books with caution. And of course the cover is all wrong,, although that’s not O’Leary’s fault.
Hmm, my experience with the author has been hit or miss, but I plan to give this a try. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Jennie.
@SusanS: “My enjoyment of her books has steadily gone downhill since The Switch.”
It’s the same for me. The Road Trip was a D for me so I was really on the fence about this one. Since we’re on the same page about the declining quality, skipping this one is probably the right choice for me.
@Darlynne: @Kareni:
Please do let me know what you think if you read it!
@SusanS: I think for me it goes back to the central conceit just not working great for me, The “manipulative deception” you reference was central to the “twist”, but the instances of what I saw as misdirection – the restaurant bill that Miranda finds, for one – felt heavy-handed and yeah, a little dishonest. (Though paradoxically, I think I had a sense that because big blinking neon lights were put around some plot points – that there must be something more to them? So if it was intended to deceive it sort of had the opposite effect.)
@Janine: You might like it better than The Road Trip, since it doesn’t have the same issues. But if someone were to ask me, “would Janine like this book; you MUST answer yes or no?” I would say no.
@Jennie: Thanks and yeaaaaah, heavy-handed misdirection and blinking neon lights are some of the things I hated about her earlier books so I think you are correct. It’s too bad because The Flatshare was so good but I think she’s a one-hit wonder for me.
I put this on hold at the library so it won’t be a big deal if I dislike it, but so far The Flat Share is her only book that I’ve liked. I’ll just adjust my expectations when I try to read it.
@Janine: I keep hoping she’ll recreate the magic. I’m trying to think what separates The Flatshare from the subsequent books and I can’t quite put my finger on it. The hero and particularly the heroine of The Flatshare were really unique and loveable characters. I’m not sure she’s achieved that level of characterization (though I liked the heroine of The Roadtrip quite a bit).
The Flatshare also had less darkness, I think? There were serious elements and the business at the end with the ex-boyfriend but none of it felt heavy like some of the issues in the books that followed.
Which isn’t to say that heavy material is something I never want to read; I’m just wondering if that’s part of the reason The Flatshare stands out above the others.
@Misti: Did you actually dislike The Switch and The Road Trip or did you just not like them as much as The Flatshare? I don’t know that I’d keep reading if I disliked those books. It’s just hard not to compare them unfavorably to the first book.
I read some spoiler reviews for this and no way am I interested. It’s being sold as a Romance which makes me mad.
@MaryK: I do think it’s inaccurate to call it a romance.
I keep hoping for another book as good as The Flatshare. I liked The Road Trip well enough but I think I’ll give this one a miss (just like I did The Switch).
@Jennie: And yet that cover just screams that someone thinks this is a romamnce.
@Jayne – If you read the “pro” reviews that retailers include with the description, all the cues for Romance are there. I also loved The Flat-share. I think that’s why this pretense at Romance has me so ticked off. I keep hoping for another book like that, and they’re moving in the opposite direction.
@Jennie: I think you are right. Like you, I like some dark books. But I don’t think O’Leary has mastered the handling of dark subject matter; she has a tendency to resort to pat explanations, not dig deep, and give inadequate motivations for how people in her books bounce back as easily as they do. The Flatshare had the perfect balance of light and dark for her voice, I agree that the characters were lovable, and also the premise of sharing a one-bedroom apartment in shifts and leaving each other notes was fresh and charming. It was also a romance (IMO; some people have called it women’s fiction) and that helps in my case too.
@Jayne: I hadn’t thought of that – probably because I never paid much attention to covers in the first place, and in the digital (and lack of bookstore…sniff) age, I often barely *see* a cover. But it’s a good point.
My default position with O’Leary is to check with trusted others that it is actually a romance before reading or listening. And when I did that here, it was most definitely not a romance so I was out.
@Jennie – The Flatshare turned into a comfort re-read for me. I really love it. Plus, for me, it fell firmly into the contemporary romance genre. I was very disappointed in The Switch, even though it might not be a bad book. That one felt like chick lit , which I generally dislike and have to be in a very particular mood to read. And after seeing reviews from The Road-trip, I couldn’t even read it.
So because I did love the Flatshare, I don’t mind borrowing this one from the library, but I’ll only give it so many pages to rope me in before I take it back. I have no problems DNF’ing books.
@Misti: I’ll be curious to know what you think of it!
@Kaetrin: I think The Flatshare was a romance but not everyone did, and with The Road Trip, Jennie saw it as romance while to me it wasn’t so clear. I actually like plenty of books that aren’t romances (particularly in YA and fantasy, but also other genres sometimes) although but usually I prefer books with romantic elements at least. However women’s fiction is a genre I’m not always interested in.
I read THE NO-SHOW this weekend and, while I found it well-written with strong characterizations of the female MCs, I have two things to say: firstly, this book has the most misleading cover since the infamous illustrated cover for Lexi Blake’s bdsm-heavy TAGGART FAMILY VALUES. Secondly, in a very odd way, THE NO-SHOW reminded me of the movie “The Crying Game”: once you get past the big “twist,” there isn’t much there; the twist is the whole story. I think readers (especially romance readers) will have a better experience with THE NO-SHOW if they go into it knowing it is NOT a romance, but women’s fiction with a twist.
I don’t want to read the book but I really want to know what the twist is!
@DiscoDollyDeb: I feel like cutesy illustrated covers are kind of played out at this point anyway. But as I said before, I don’t pay much attention to covers.
I do think expecting it to be a romance would really affect one’s enjoyment of the book.
@Kaetrin: Since you asked:
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The three romances are on different timelines (the Valentine’s Day no-shows all occur in different years – 2015, 2018 and 2019, IIRC), though the misdirection really tries to make the reader believe that they are simultaneous. For instance there is a scene with heroine #2 directly after a scene with heroine #1 in which heroine #2 finds a receipt for breakfast for two that seems like evidence of cheating – Joseph had had breakfast with heroine #1 in the previous scene. But they actually occur in completely different years and Joseph’s reason for hiding the fact that he wasn’t alone at breakfast has a reasonable explanation. FURTHER SPOILER
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One of the female MCs dies. So there’s one death, one fairly amicable breakup, and one HEA.
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I think there are actually two HEAs: Jane & Joseph and Miranda & AJ.
@DiscoDollyDeb: True! I didn’t consider the second one (though in some ways I liked them better).
I am so not sorry that I skipped the book and read the spoiler instead. I often love twists but I think this one would have probably made me feel manipulated. That is one of my biggest issues with O’Leary’s writing anyhow.
@Jennie: I think this would have just annoyed me – it doesn’t sound very innovative – like, it’s not The Sixth Sense or anything.
@Janine: @Kaetrin: Just “oh, hell no.” I’m so glad I didn’t read this one.
@Janine: I think the only reason the manipulation didn’t bother me as much is because I was expecting *something.* It was clear that things were not as they seemed.
(I think my thriller habit has inured me somewhat to dumb twists, too.)
@Kaetrin: Yeah, one of the reasons I think I guessed the twist (though I wasn’t sure of it until about 3/4 through the book) was that it was the only explanation I could think of that made any sense. In fact I was concerned it would be too obvious in the review and I’d be spoiling readers.