Wait – did you say didn’t ask questions? Isn’t she dating the last person to have seen her missing sister alive – the guy who is most likely to be involved somehow in her disappearance? The lesser characters are pretty interchangeable and are just there to react to the action. However, unlike so many female characters with no agency, this was clearly an intentional choice by the author and made sense when you found out the ending – but this meant that for 90% of the book Ellen may as well have been a cardboard cutout. Ellen is the perfect sexy lamp of a girlfriend, not asking questions or doing anything other than watching her weight or getting her hair done. has any sort of personality, except for the character who may or may not be Layla. However, when the explanation for them appearing is Layla always carried one with her, is that metaphor needed? Is it relevant? Wouldn’t a mangled Barbie have done a better job?įinn is pretty much the only character that you get to know i.e. Now, I’m not so thick that I can’t see the metaphoric relevance to the storyline (which I’m not going to elaborate on because spoilers) of using darling little Russian dolls as supposed harbringers of doom. What really happened? Is Finn to blame? Is Layla alive or is it an elaborate hoax? Where do Finn’s loyalties lie? However, Russian dolls start appearing in random places (relevant because Layla always carried one with her) and Finn starts receiving mysterious email correspondence regarding his previous life. We know from the offset that Finn is hiding something about Layla’s disappearance at a service station in France years before but we’re not sure of details or even if Layla is still alive. He’s living with Ellen, the sister of his missing girlfriend Layla and has just asked her to marry him, which is weird but you know, whatevs. Paris did!īring Me Back is the story of Finn, a 40 something financy type person (something to do with stocks and shares portfolios – it’s a bit vague). Or the most adorable, not even slightly creepy Matryoshka (or Russian dolls – you know, the super cute brightly painted type that nest inside of each other). I certainly thought so.īut which creepy doll would you choose? A Stephen King style clown toy? A terrifying Victorian creation? A crudely made voodoo doll?

So if you were going to write a book – a thriller, no less – where you were creating a omnipresent sense of foreboding, a potential back-from-the-dead plotline, a character exerting their power to possibly ruin your life you might think that creepy dolls would fit into the plot nicely. Dolls in general are pretty creepy, right? The glass eyes that follow you round the room, the oddly child-like features, the ones that talk…especially the ones that talk…*shudders*.

Ba paris bring me back