"Almost Surely Dead"

Almost Surely Dead by Amina Akhtar

Amazon First Reads

Pages: 282 Genre: mystery, thriller

Rating: 2 Stars

Kindle Highlights

Dunia lived a normal life — or at least, she mostly did. As the daughter of Pakistani immigrants, she is now living in New York and working as a pharmacist, dealing with the after-effects of her mother's death and her broken engagement. Then someone attempts to kill her. Once, twice, and a third time. Something is going on, and with Dunia at the center of it, she is forced to confront the ghosts of her past to understand what's happening around her. Meanwhile, in the present day, Dunia has been missing for almost a year, which has turned her into the hit story for a true crime podcast. Their campaign to Find Dunia is told alongside Dunia's experiences in the days before her disappearance, as well as her 5-year-old self.

I really wanted to like this book, and in some ways I did. The concept was interesting, I enjoyed seeing the story play out from a variety of perspectives, and the inclusion of the South Asian folklore was captivating (especially as I personally hadn't heard of it before). However, the actual execution of the book really fell flat. Ultimately, while I was interested enough to see it through, the book was more of a chore than a fun experience.

My biggest issue was the writing itself. It just felt so juvenile and underdeveloped. Adult-Dunia spoke the exact same way as Child-Dunia, which was jarring. Choppy sentences, exclamation marks, sporadic acknowledgements of the audience, and a tendency to tell instead of show made the tone a lot more casual and relaxed than it should've been for a book about a woman who is constantly about to be murdered. It felt more like I was reading a summary told by a friend than a thrilling account of a haunting tale. There were also many examples of Dunia repeating herself or contradicting herself within a short timespan, which was just frustrating.

Dunia herself was also just not an exciting character. She was a passive observer through pretty much the whole thing, letting everyone else tell her key information and do things to her. Other than one self-defense class, she never took an active role in protecting herself or moving the story along. In fact, there was really no development from her at all. She would say that she needed to do something differently, but it was always irrelevant in one way or another. All she really did was complain about how terrible her life was or how bad of a person she was. While it's a very realistic feeling, it doesn't make for an engaging character. The self-deprecation got really old really fast, especially considering she acted the exact same throughout the entire book.

That all being said, the saving grace of the book was the general concept. With more time and care put into the execution, I think I would've rated the book a lot higher, because I do think it has a good foundation. I'm going to be vague in an effort to not spoil the book, but I think it's safe to say that some of the answers regarding Dunia's mystery lie in the South Asian folklore that Dunia was both never taught and fled from in her adult life. I was very interested to learn about this stuff, and it was the most interesting part of the story. However, it was only ever told to Dunia (and, by extension, us) through conversations where someone else was going the research. I wanted Dunia to be more involved in the process of learning about and unpacking the truth of these cultural stories, both because it would've made the book more interesting and because it would've added some depth to Dunia's character as she reconnects to her lost history.

Taking Dunia out of the investigation entirely made the story bland, often leaning more towards the tone of a college lecture (which is a lazy plot device for exposition that, yes, this book had) than a thriller. But more than that, it contributed to a weak ending. Every answer was given to us either by Dunia's friends or by the podcast hosts (which I'll get into more in a moment). Instead of putting the reader right in the middle of things, we were just told the answers as if the author was checking off her "loose plot thread" list. While this does mean there's no room for holes, it also means there's no depth to the story. No real motives or grey areas to contemplate, just facts. The slight bit of suspense that had been built all just fizzled away because the author decided to be done, not because things reached a natural or exciting ending.

By far the best-executed sections were the podcast transcripts. The story is told from three points of view: 5-year-old Dunia, pre-disappearance Dunia, and the true crime podcast transcripts. While the hosts were absolutely insufferable (in this house we hate true crime), I liked how different their perspective was. The contrast between how they interpreted things (either through interviews or just general biases) and how Dunia experienced them was cool. I wish that the author had embraced that more with each of the different POVs. Each of them had a unique vantage point through which they were seeing Dunia's case unfold, and it would've been cool if the reader was given more of a chance to sift through each person's biases to find the true series of events. Instead, all the Child-Dunia and podcast sections did was spoil the main storyline and take away what little tension there was.

I also want to point out that, in general, the author seemed to do a lot better writing dialogue than prose. While most of Dunia's narration drove me crazy, I liked the conversations (even if there were too many of them). I attribute this to part of the reason why I liked the podcast sections more: as they were transcripts, they were just straight dialogue. Each character had a voice that came across really well and made me enjoy reading it, even if they were obnoxious true crime podcasters.

Finally, I wish that the "social politics" (for lack of a better phrase) was woven into the story better. When intersectionality was written naturally, I appreciated it. However, most of the time, these aspects were written in a way that felt preachy, even though I agreed with them. Again, speaking in vague terms to avoid spoilers: there's a message throughout about how the police are general unhelpful to women of color. That is a fact. But the narrative we were being presented didn't really match up with this message. In fact, the cops seemed to be almost too active in Dunia's case (as there were a lot of things that they did that would definitely not happen in real life). So Dunia complaining about the cops not taking her seriously never really made sense because we knew they were investigating this case for a really long time. A simple change like making Dunia's case cold by the time of the podcast (or even after the first murder attempt) would've helped a lot to convey the point that the author was trying to make. And there are many other examples like this; it's not that these issues don't exist in real life, it's that they don't exist for Dunia, which means there wasn't really a place for them in this story.

Almost Surely Dead could have been really good, it just never lived up to it's full potential. Everything felt half-baked and underwhelming, despite few moments of intrigue. With a little bit more work, I think a lot of it could've been saved.