What the Monkey Saw - A Death Doula Novel: Book 1 by Lynn Chandler Willis

From the Back Cover

What would YOU do for family?

When F.B.I. agent Emily Gayle’s partner is brutally murdered, Emily forsakes her career at the bureau and returns home to the North Carolina mountains to care for her disabled father. Guilt ridden over leaving her partner alone to die, Emily takes a job as an end-of-life caregiver.

Deep in Appalachia, Jude Courtland is desperate for a fast buck to pay for his grandmother’s chemotherapy. Together with his brother Crispin and cousin Devo, the trio takes to hijacking insulin delivery vans and selling the stolen drugs on the black market. When Emily is assigned to cancer patient Hazel Courtland, the line separating right and wrong begins to blur.

As the hijackings escalate and turn violent, Emily’s intuition hones in on startling evidence she can no longer ignore. Struggling with the truth, Emily is torn between her conscience and her loyalty to a dying woman. With her own life in jeopardy, Emily’s forced to take a side. Right or wrong, the consequences are deadly.

Excerpt from the Book - 

Some men are born to good. Some men are born to evil. And some men are destined to live their lives somewhere in between. Jude Courtland stared through the passenger window of his truck, focusing without blinking on the road so hard his eyes burned. He didn’t dare blink. Life could change in that split second and he wasn’t going to fuck this up. There was too much riding on it. Like the deal he’d brokered with the pit bull for the money they needed. Plus, his grandma’s life depended on it.

What the Monkey Saw - A Death Doula Novel: Book 1

I received a free copy of this book and my thanks to the author, Lynn Chandler Willis and the team of BookSirens for the copy. 

All views expressed in this review are my own and based on my reading of this book. Some of the initial comments were made as I progressed in this book and I have not tried editing them as it expresses my contiguous thoughts as I proceeded with the story.

I swung between 3 stars and 4, finally settling for a 4 for this book. 

New story and a new author for me, the title and the cover intrigued me enough to try the book. 

The cover is a play of the three wise monkeys made famous by Mahatma Gandhi. But the title does not come into play in the story till the very end. 

The story started with a bang, a smooth robbery where the smoothness showed the criminals led by Jude in fair light and set up the story. 

But soon after the story slowed down till half the book was over making me lose interest in the book. The book still had enough juices to keep me interested to see how it ended and it was the enigmatic equation of our protagonist Emily, the Death doula in the story with our principal antagonist Jude's family that kept the story simmering. 

The story started picking up soon after with a series of robberies, terminal illness, sparks of attraction and a forbidden entanglement form the rest of the story. 

The story involving a death doula was a novel entry for a story and Lynn has milked it a great deal. The depressing but honest profession providing terminal people with a volunteer companion who enriches and enlivens the dying process. 

This is not very far from the professional Rudaali's of India who are professional mourners. 

The idea provides an ideal entry for Emily into Jude's family and the rest forms the basis of the story with Emily's tragic but law enforcement past gives her the pass to act as a death doula but who has her eyes and ears open. 

Or too open in this instance. 

There is not much of a mystery in the story and the flow is pretty consistent and straight forward. Emily's profession and her equation with Jude's grandma provide the foil for the story to revolve around the crimes and possible redemption. 

What worked for me was the emotional tangle and a desperation that tends to come to people when their near & dear ones are threatened by danger or by ill health and at some point everyone tends to breed dark thoughts which bring a readiness to walk the dark side of law if required. 

What did not was the slow pace of the first half which was only partially necessary for context. Jude's girl friend and her story despite being crucial to the crime did not give much to the arc, rather meandering the story. A tighter first and second quarter editing would have glossed the book into another level. 

All in all a decent read and one that I would recommend other people to read. 

I am also keeping an eye on the author Lynn Willis' other books to see how they play out.

Please do not forget to post your comments. I am an equal opportunity person so would love to hear your love or your hate for the review or book in any order. Please write what you did not like or whether the book was an absolute disaster for you and why.

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5283618730