The Very Nice Box follows Ava, a rigid product engineer at STÄDA, a hip furniture company, as she deals with a new manager, new company vibe and expectations, and trauma from a horrific loss from her past. As Ava becomes closer to her handsome new boss, Mat, she starts lowering her walls and opening up… but has she made a mistake?
Okay, so I need to admit: my method of not always reading book descriptions may have bit me here. The description starts out by saying that this book is for fans of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine and, being one of my favorites of 2020, I jumped right on it. While the first half of the book is VERY much like Eleanor, at the halfway mark of the book the tone takes a big shift down into much more thriller territory. I was not at all expecting this, and I got a bit of whiplash transitioning between these themes. Overall, the writing was good, I liked the characters, but I don’t read a lot of thrillers precisely because I am waaaaay too good at figuring out how it’s going to end, and that happened here. I was just waiting to get to that ending I knew was coming.
Upon completing this book I said to my husband “it feels like two different books that were stitched together”, and he pointed to the cover and the two author names and said “maybe it was…”, and I think he’s right. The first part is contemporary fiction, and the second half a thriller that is sort of like Get Out, but focused on LGBTQ instead of race. Either the authors split the book up to write it, or they couldn’t quite decide which genre to angle to and got a little muddled between the two. Overall, good, not great.
Okay, so I need to admit: my method of not always reading book descriptions may have bit me here. The description starts out by saying that this book is for fans of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine and, being one of my favorites of 2020, I jumped right on it. While the first half of the book is VERY much like Eleanor, at the halfway mark of the book the tone takes a big shift down into much more thriller territory. I was not at all expecting this, and I got a bit of whiplash transitioning between these themes. Overall, the writing was good, I liked the characters, but I don’t read a lot of thrillers precisely because I am waaaaay too good at figuring out how it’s going to end, and that happened here. I was just waiting to get to that ending I knew was coming.
Upon completing this book I said to my husband “it feels like two different books that were stitched together”, and he pointed to the cover and the two author names and said “maybe it was…”, and I think he’s right. The first part is contemporary fiction, and the second half a thriller that is sort of like Get Out, but focused on LGBTQ instead of race. Either the authors split the book up to write it, or they couldn’t quite decide which genre to angle to and got a little muddled between the two. Overall, good, not great.