This book was ridiculous- and not in a good way.
There’s a lot to be said about Louise Jensen’s The Gift, but to sum it up for you, this book wasn’t exactly my cup of tea (see what I did there?).
Let me start by saying that I’ve also read The Sister by Louise Jensen, and while that book also had its fair share of ridiculousness, I still gave it 4 stars on Goodreads because the story was at least somewhat plausible. I wouldn’t say the same for The Gift.
If you’ve never heard of this book before, this is the description (which I’m assuming can be found on the back cover if you aren’t reading the Kindle version):
The perfect daughter. The perfect girlfriend. The perfect murder? Jenna is given another shot at life when she receives a donor heart from a girl called Callie. Eternally grateful to Callie and her family, Jenna gets closer to them, but she soon discovers that Callie’s perfect family is hiding some very dark secrets… Callie’s parents are grieving, yet Jenna knows they’re only telling her half the story. Where is Callie’s sister Sophie? She’s been ‘abroad’ since her sister’s death but something about her absence doesn’t add up. And when Jenna mets Callie’s boyfriend Nathan, she makes a shocking discovery. Jenna knows that Callie didn’t die in an accident. But how did she die? Jenna is determined to discover the truth but it could cost her everything; her loved ones, her sanity, even her life.
Here’s my list of complaints (highlight for spoilers, written in white text):
- Too many unrealistic plot twists
- Jenna, the main character, is the personification of nails on a chalkboard. I don’t think there’s a single person in her life that she doesn’t irritate at one point or another.
- For example, Sam’s mother couldn’t get in touch with Owen because Sophie just happened to have been his girlfriend and accidentally murdered him- c’mon!
- Way, way, WAY too much product placement- HOLY FUCK! Not to mention the millions of times the author alludes to Ed Sheeran (aka Ed Sheehan? I submitted that one to Kindle as a content error, but I digress). Did Louise Jensen get a cut from all of the product placement she included in this book? For her sake, I hope she did, because it’ll be a long time before I pay for another one of her books.
- There is no clarity regarding what actually happened to Callie.
- Was Nathan driving when the car crashed or was Callie behind the wheel? It made sense when Nathan said he was driving after Jenna had her “flashback,” but later on the reader is told that this isn’t true without any further explanation.
- By the end of the novel, we still don’t know who (if anyone) was following Jenna– yes, we know that Joe broke into her apartment, but was he also the hooded figure she was seeing everywhere, or was she simply hallucinating due to the side effects of her medications? I guess we’ll never know!
- How does Sam ever forgive Jenna for the things she did to Nathan? Not only did she mess with Nathan’s head and then have the nerve to sleep with him, but she poisoned the poor guy and told him he was going to die. I find it a little bit hard to believe that all was simply forgiven in the end. I mean, really?
