"Just Stay Away"

Just Stay Away by Tony Wirt

Amazon First Reads Pick for September 2023

Pages: 277 Genre: thriller

Rating: 2.5 Stars

I wish I had liked this book more than I actually did. It was genuinely stressful to read, and very well done, but unfortunately there were some major issues that totally took me out of the story.

Craig is a stay at home parent who is working on his debut novel, which is turning out to be hard to balance. Until his daughter, Alice, meets a new friend who comes out of the forest one day. The two get very close, but Craig is the one who sees the boy's creepy behavior. No one else seems to think anything is unusual. Surely someone so young couldn't be that bad, right?

The premise of this book was intriguing, and ultimately I do think Wirt wrote it well. The ending especially was genuinely stressful, and I was upset on Craig's behalf at people not seeing the issues with this kid. I think it would've been better had the point of view of the story been more personal, though. Although we were getting to see Craig's thought process, there would be times when the narrator would insert a moment of objectivity that disillusioned me to Craig's point of view. It felt like we were meant to see Craig as someone having an uncontrollable downward spiral, and I wish we had been allowed to wallow in that more.

I also find Craig to be both an idiot and not a great parent, which were both very distracting. He was not behaving in a way that made sense for a competent adult to behave. Since this is a thriller, I needed to be able to root for him. But then he would do the stay-at-home parent equivalent of characters splitting up in a horror movie. I won't root for you to succeed if you're fighting against your own ambitions, Craig.

I will elaborate more in a moment, after a spoiler warning. If you want to read it for yourself, just trust me that he spends the first half of the book making choices that were so obnoxious and unwise that I was genuinely considering putting the book down. I'm glad I didn't, because the ending honestly made up for a lot of my issues. But it was too close for comfort.

Wirt also didn't take full advantage of Craig's backstory. The information is meant to be used as a way to validate Craig's poor decision making and justify why some people don't believe him, but it was never used to its full extent, which would have been easy to do.

Unfortunately, it was also very clear to me that this book was written by a man. I'm not sure I can put the reason why into words (at least not without spoilers), but if you get it, you get it.

Ultimately, I didn't hate this book. But I probably won't be reading it again. If you want a good psychological thriller that's kind of a quick read, go for it. It won't be a waste of time. But there are probably better options out there if you care about liking your main characters.

SPOILER WARNING — From here on out, I'm going to be talking about details about the plot. If you don't want to read the book, if you've already read it, or you don't care about spoilers, go forth. Otherwise, you've been warned.

Content warnings: sexual harassment/rape culture (mention, not graphic), suicide (mention, in the past)

Craig picks weird times to clue his wife into his interactions with Levi (the creepy child). Big things that can't be hidden, like Alice's allergic reaction or his trips to the ER, were obviously shared. But there's not one good reason why he didn't tell his wife about Levi breaking into their house. At that point in the story, he'd been given no reason to believe that she wouldn't believe him, and that is an absurd thing to not tell your wife. This also could've been built into why she doesn't believe him. Maybe she tries to insist that he goes to the cops, but Craig says no because of the last interaction he had with that family and the cops, which sows the seeds of doubt in her mind.

It was also wild to me that no part of him was willing to consider that his actions at the beginning of the book were incorrect. The first time the cops were called on him was a culmination of two events. First, he was standing on Levi's back porch, staring at the house, and then hid when Levi's mom walked out. She threatened to call the cops despite his protests. Then, later, he invited Levi to go out to read with them, but only if Levi asked his mom. Levi disappeared for a bit, then confirmed that he got permission. Evidentially, he did not, as his mother believed that he had been kidnapped. I get that the reality was not nefarious, but it certainly looked that way! Yet at no point was Craig willing to consider that he should just apologize without trying to justify it. Craig going on defense felt so strange that I trusted him significantly less.

This also leads into my best example of the book being "obviously written by a man," as I said earlier. After the two scenarios I explained above, Craig was talking to a neighbor who tried to warn him about the wives in Levi's (rich) neighborhood. Craig specifically remarks that there seem to be some misogynistic vibes coming from the neighbor. And then, on the very next page, he gives a very "boys will be boys" defense of Levi peeping into people's windows. And then he does it again later. You're not doing anything to fight misogyny by playing into rape culture, Craig. You can say you don't condone it, but then you continue to let this boy hang out around your young daughter alone.

Actually, Craig spends a lot of the first part of the book weirdly justifying Levi's inappropriate behavior, which never feels justified. The reason we're given is that he wants to write without his daughter bothering him, but I know a couple 7-year-olds, and I'm pretty confident that they could be self-sustaining for a few hours.

I mentioned earlier that Craig's experience as a child wasn't used to its full extent, and this is exactly what I meant. The story is that Craig felt like he neglected a lonely boy next door who ended up killing himself. It's a sad story, sure, but not particularly shocking (despite being put forth as a surprise) or relevant. I understood that Craig was projecting his own issues onto Levi, but it was incredibly half-hearted. None of Craig's behavior actually gave me the sense that he was trying to protect Levi outside of the times that he was telling me that's what he was doing.

The other child's suicide would have been a good way to make us more sympathetic to Craig. Instead of basically neglecting his child in favor of his book, he could've been feeling emotionally responsible for Levi. Then, when he's ignoring red flags, it's because Craig believes that he's the one who can save Levi. It would then be his wife (in my version of the book, she already knows), and she tries to convince him that this is just a trauma response. That could also play into why she ends up not believing him — he refuses therapy and is getting worse, so he's not seeing reality properly. Levi could even play into Craig's trauma.

Just Stay Away really did have potential; clearly, because I think it met the expectations in the end. But these issues were too much for me to fully be on Craig's side, which I think is necessary for a thriller.