So Close

Wow - i really tried to like this book. At times it was hard to follow and I didn’t like that most of this was written in the third person. It took me a long time to finish as I wasn’t really all that engaged or that interested really. I might not purchase the next one. It’s too bad.

SO CLOSE is the first instalment in Sylvia Day’s contemporary, adult BLACKLIST dark, erotic, suspense, thriller set in the author’s CROSSFIRE world. This is thirty-two-year old, billionaire businessman Kane Black and his wife Lily’s story line.

Told from four first person perspectives (Witte, Amy, Aliyah, Lily) and second person (Lily) SO CLOSE follows the dysfunctional Black / Armand family as they battle one another for control of the family fortune and businesses, businesses built with someone else’s money. Six years earlier, Kane Black’s wife Lily, disappeared and thought to have drowned a few days after their wedding, and in the interim, Kane Black struggled with what happened and why. Six years searching the faces of nameless women who looked like the woman he continued to love ended with the ‘return’ of his wife, a hit and run, and weeks of recovery and rehab. All is not well, Lily is not the woman Kane Black remembers, and the family must now battle someone else for control of Baharan Pharmaceuticals, ECRA+ (Cosmeceuticals) and the Social Creamery Management Agency.

Kane Black has romantacized and idolized his missing wife so much so that no other woman could compare. Women tried, including those he considered family and friends, but the memory of his wife, his Lily, could never be erased, no matter how anybody tried. The unreality of perfection was paramount, her existence was thought to be the madness of a fractured mind. Lily is an enigma-Kane’s obsession a mystery and bewilderment but with her return, more questions arise for everyone involved.

The secondary and supporting characters play a major role throughout the story line often taking the lead perspectives: Kane Black’s siblings Darius Armand and his wife Amy, brother Ramin Armand, and their sister Rosana Armand; their mother Aliyah; Kane’s majordomo and security specialist Nick Witte; Tech specialist Ryan Landon of LanCorp; Drs Goldstein and Hamid, and the return of Gideon and Eva Cross.

Throughout the story Lily talks to herself, about Lily in third person but addresses Kane (to the reader) in second person point of view. We are up close and personal with Lily, Amy, Aliyah and Witte’s thoughts and thought processes-Lily’s thoughts reveal a darkness, an unknown, a secret past that is about to return. Kane Black’s persona and power are revealed through his interactions with, and observations by other characters- Kane’s perception and knowledge all come from second-hand information.

SO CLOSE is a slow building story line; a complex and detailed tale involving many moving and hidden parts following several intersecting pathways and channels. Think ‘SUCCESSION’ but more dysfunctional, darker and dangerous with assassins, espionage, and organized crime, hidden and blatant desperation, infidelity, jealousy and greed, secret lives, obsession and betrayal. The narcissism is strong; the hate is vitriolic and acerbic; the desolation and misery are flagrant; the power and control are dominant. The premise is heavy and intricate; the romance is bewitching; the characters are desperate, determined and dynamic. SO CLOSE ends on a cliff hanger-you have been warned.