With a Vengeance Makes Me Question Riley Sager's Popularity (book review)

FINAL RATING: 4

GENRE: Adult Thriller

LENGTH: 383 pages

PLOT

Anna Matheson invites the six people responsible for destroying her family aboard a 13 hour train ride. They’re to be arrested upon their arrival at their destination, but on the way, she intends to confront them for their sins.  

CHARACTERS

This was my fourth Sager book (though admittedly I DNF’d one). He has a chronic problem of writing flat female characters. To be clear, I don’t think that male authors are incapable writing good, well rounded female characters and vice versa. I just think that Sager specifically can’t write complex female protagonists. Anna is so obsessed with avenging her family that she makes it her entire world. She has no goals/no plans for her future. Her entire ‘personality’ is hating the people who hurt her family. To be fair, I can’t imagine how I’d feel if someone was responsible for my family’s destruction. But I find it impossible to believe that Anna never had any real dreams for her life BEFORE her family’s destruction.

The antagonists of this novel, the ones responsible for destroying Anna’s family, are Kenneth Wentworth, Judd Dodge, Herb Pulaski, Edith Berhard, and Sal Lawrence. Kenneth Wentworth is replaced by his son and Anna’s ex-boyfriend Dante, who accepts the invitation on his father’s behalf. Among them, Sal was the only one who had a sympathetic backstory. I felt for her in a way I couldn’t bring myself to for the others. It added some extra emotion to the story that Anna once had a close relationship with both Edith and Sal before they betrayed her.

There is also Seamus who is Anna’s friend and ally. He lost his brother in the accident that derailed Anna’s family. My favorite quote from the novel is about his relationship with his brother - “When his brother was alive, Seamus always knew he’d be found. But now Sean’s gone and Seamus feels forever lost.” (page 380 of the large print version of the book).

WRITING

This novel read like a deadly cat and mouse game on what used to be an innocent playground for Anna. At first, I loved the idea that Anna was using the train to get revenge as it was previously owned by her family and had connections to all her enemies. Then it’s mentioned that Anna was inspired by films set on trains which made zero sense. I suppose I gave Sager too much credit with assuming it was because of how all the characters’ betrayals led back to Anna’s family’s train business.

The novel is full of plot twists to the point that it becomes overkill. At first, I wanted to keep reading to see what crazy reveal was going to come next. As they kept coming, though, I grew weary.  

The weakest and strangest moment in this entire novel is towards the end where Sager announces the book’s own major plot hole. I won’t say more than that to avoid spoilers. But the fact that the book openly admits to its own oversights is WILD to me. You’d think that would have caused Sager to reevaluate some things and go back and do some rewriting to patch up the holes, but nope.

Trigger warnings for: guns, knife violence, Nazis, suicide.

FINAL RATING:

I won’t lie, this was a fun book to read for a lot of it. Do I think, as a writer myself, that it was objectively well written? Well…no, not really. If you turn your brain off, though, then you can enjoy the reading experience. At least until you grow fatigued.

FINAL RATING: 2⭐️