Slow Burner - Laura Lippman

Edition Details:

Format: E-book | Page Count: 33 | Publisher: Amazon Original Stories  | Series:  Hush Collection

Book Link: Amazon

Story

It was the text message that made Liz realise that everything was not over between Phil and his lover. Liz had been working on saving her marriage and had thought that Phil had moved on. 

But Liz found out that that was not the case. Phil was still pining for his lover and was willing to throw their marriage under the bus for it. 

But Liz was not going to take it lying down. She’s going to do everything in her power to save her marriage. 

Will Phil and Liz’s marriage end? What would Liz do to save her marriage?

My Views

Slow Burner is a novelette written by Laura Lippman. It is a part of hush collection, a series of kindle ebooks published by Amazon where famous crime fiction authors have written thrillers around deception and how it can create life and death situations. Laura Lippman's Slow Burner is also written around the lies and deception and how it drastically affects lives of Phil and Liz. 

A slow burner is something that gradually becomes interesting, enjoyable, successful, etc and in this way this is an apt title for this story.  

It starts with Liz reading her's husband's message to his lover. Liz and Phil were taking counseling to try to mend their broken marraige and there Liz had promised that she'll not spy again on Phil. So now liz is not able to undestand how she'll confront Phil without letting him know that she's broken the promise. These messages are what move the stories ahead. The reader along with Liz keeps reading the messages exchanged between Phil and his lover. The reader also gets to see Liz's reaction to these messages. What Liz will do after reading theses messages is  what keeps the reader reading the story. 

Since these love notes and Liz's reaction to them are the things that are  moving the story forward so there were times when i felt i was watching a soap opera and i had to force myself to keep reading it. I found the thrill quotient lacking there and thought it could have been improved. 

The story itself is predictable Although, i could guess what's Liz is going to do i wanted to know how she's going to do that. And the way story is written it does manages to suprise the reader in the end. It's said that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned and i would say that this story is an apt example of it.

Although Slow Burner is a thriller but the author does manage to comment on the society via it’s characters. Liz is a teacher who teaches greek mythology. Through the Zeus and Hera’s story the author underlines the way our society has always held females responsible for the mistakes of men. Whenever a woman finds out about an affair of her husband like Hera she more often than not blames the woman for it.Through Phil’s and his lovers situation the author highlights an issue in the the mordern work culture. We get to see how woman in most of the cases tolerate advances of powerful man in corporate situations because saying the truth is a risk which if gone wrong can jeopardize their careers.So they just adopt an ambigouous attitude which in turn could hurt both the parties involved. 

In conclusion, i think if the story would not have predicitble and would have been a little bit more thrilling than it could have been a a lot more better story for me. What saves it is the twist in the end which blindsided me. So, for me it's an okay read and can be read once. 

Book Link: Amazon