Book Review: The Surrogate

When I picked The Surrogate on NetGalley I actually thought I was getting THIS novel that I’d seen doing the social media rounds, when in actuality I was getting THIS one. Either way, it seems clear that I had zero idea what I was delving into but at least in this case I also hadn’t seen any commentary either negative or positive before opening it up. I do love the excitement of starting a book I’ve been looking forward to but there’s also something freeing about having literally no preconceptions and just being able to start totally fresh.

A thriller is usually what I turn to when I’m in a reading rut. A good plot tends to snap me out of it so it was with that in mind that I turned to The Surrogate dear fellow readers. I have to say though it didn’t really immediately do its job in that regard. Though the initial concept is pretty intriguing - a woman on vacation meets her doppleganger, who asks her to switch lives for a month - the problem for me was that there was just so much preamble. We meet our protagonist - teacher Jenn Cooper - on a holiday in Key West where she’s touring Hemingway’s house and dreaming about the novel she’s planning to write. When she meets Jennifer Moriarty, they’re both shocked by their shared resemblance and they quickly embark on a couple of nights of drinking, eating and game-playing as Jennifer strives to get Jenn to agree to this one month life swap. The next morning Jenn wakes up, Jennifer is gone and her nightmare begins. We were almost 20% into the novel by this point and I wasn’t exactly rushing to pick it back up. I was really hoping for something to happen that would make me feel invested in Jenn’s journey. Even with all of this backstory, I really couldn’t work out why she went along with the whole shebang at all! It didn’t seem either exciting nor totally necessary and, though fatigued, Jenn cared so much about her job and her students I couldn’t quite believe she’d let this random woman take it all over with next to no preparation.

However, once she gets to the Moriarty residence the story picks up. Katz creates a compelling atmosphere in this strange, almost empty upper-middle class home. I felt totally ill at ease as she wandered through the rooms and slowly set up home herself. Clearly, all is not well with the Moriarty family but between not wanting to blow her cover and the strange absence of Jennifer’s husband and older son, answers are hard to come by. I love how Katz drops little hints that foreshadow what might come to pass without laying it on too thick and this was the section of the novel that did begin to grip me. The only other resident living at the house with Jenn is Jennifer’s younger son Martin, a miserable, smelly, unhealthy looking boy who spends the majority of his time locked in his bedroom playing violent video games. From conversations with her new family members, Jenn quickly learns that Martin’s behaviour is of extreme concern to those around him and that he has been pretty much neglected, most obviously by his mother. Putting her teacher hat on, Jenn decides to get Martin the help he needs and leaps into action, working alongside the school to improve his behaviour and his studies. I actually found this aspect of the novel really compelling as it finally gave me a chance to get to know the characters in the novel and engage properly with the story. Though aware that she’s simply a stand-in in this life, Jenn naturally starts to put down roots and the effect is disarming.

Now, this is where the twists start coming and the ‘thriller proper’ begins. As always, out of an abundance of caution for not imparting spoilers I’ll be super careful about what I share from this point on. I don’t think it’ll come as a surprise to anyone that Martin doesn’t simply become a delightful teenager or that the life swap pans out as promised. There is a fantastic little pocket of time in which I found myself holding my breath, absolutely floored as to how Jenn could ever extricate herself from the ever-worsening situation. I’m always impressed when an author can do that, can create genuine feelings of shock and fear solely from words on a page, so credit where it’s due! I also really liked that Katz kept us guessing about the other members of the Moriarty family. I had no idea who to trust and whether people were purposely withholding information or Jenn simply didn’t have enough background knowledge to eke it out. For a book that took a long time to properly get started, it felt like the twists kept coming right up to the end.

Unfortunately the final twist simply wasn’t to my taste. I think it’s worth saying that for many people it will probably be a satisfactory ending and it definitely does not shy away from getting pretty dark and depressing. So, I’m not by any means saying I don’t think it’s well written or convincing. However, without risking any spoilers (and so making it difficult to discuss properly), I will just say that it draws upon a big and important concept that I really, really hate seeing consistently used as a catch-all for human behaviour in thrillers as though it perfectly explains everything that has just happened. I appreciate that this is fiction and that while this is something that I don’t personally enjoy, I totally respect that for many people this will be a fun, twisty and impactful ending. For me though, it was a bit of a letdown. After following Jenn throughout her whole experience, I’d really hoped to see Katz guide her protagonist out of the convoluted web she’d drawn her into in a similarly intriguing manner.