Caught in the Light

I think I’m secretly a big book lover… I think I just love how some books are able to keep you hooked for hundreds of pages. A little fascinating if you ask me. After A Little Life, though not as hefty, Caught in the Light also qualifies as a big boy review. I actually read this one some years ago, but the book I’m currently reading doesn’t feel very autumn-y to me and I just found myself looking through my Goodreads archive for the TBR. When I saw Caught in the Light, I remembered how hooked it got me and made me want to reread it now. I remember buying this book as my first purchase from Book Depository (rip). It was totally random, and I ordered it along with Love, Rosie. They accidentally sent me two copies of each and I ended up giving the spare ones away. I don’t remember if my friends loved them as much as I did, but I surely enjoyed them. Anyway, let’s get onto the actual review.

Caught in the Light is the first, and so far the only, book I’ve read from Robert Goddard. A little Google search about him is actually enough to see his general writing style but I wasn’t ready for his plot twists nevertheless. I literally didn’t see most of them coming. This was during the time when I was more into mystery novels but as always, I wasn’t very easily impressed by just any book. The first half of this one was very promising. I was going through the pages in lightning speed. I especially loved how he described the scenery as he travelled from one place to another. I appreciate this a lot since the protagonist was a photographer and being able to imagine all the locations as a photograph was priceless. 

The book is written through the perspective of Ian, a photographer on assignment in Vienna (I’ve only ever been to Vienna once but reading about it took me back to my visit there :) ). He begins a whirlwind affair with this mysterious woman called Marian, who he meets by chance. He gets so caught up in this that he leaves his wife to go back and be with Marian. As he heads to the place they promised to meet, he fails to see Marian and then proceeds to find out that she doesn’t even exist. Just like all of us hopeless romantics, he decides to somehow find this mysterious woman and we have this mystery book in our hands as a result. I say hopeless romantic but I guess any supposedly sane person would at least do a little search after they find out the person they saw in flesh was indeed not real. Except, Ian did a bit more than a little search. Not that surprising after he did a bit more than falling in love and actually leaving his wife after such little time, I guess.

For most parts, the twists were satisfying and got me turning the pages even faster, however, through the end, they got a little too unbelievable. For books that get me hooked from the start, I tend to ignore these sorts of imperfections unless they’re too silly to ignore. And that’s what I did with this one too. I just came to accept the twists as they were and had a great time finishing the book. I guess I wasn’t that harsh back then. Current me probably would’ve felt frustrated at how unsatisfying some of the answers we got in the end were. Oh well.