“No amount of words, no amount of promises of violence and revenge would match the anger that soared inside me when I read those messages.”
Have you ever had a weekend from hell? Where every plan seems to come undone, the weather seems permanently apocalyptic and the mood of you and your party is constantly in the mud? We would wager even your worst weekends were better than a couple of days Caroline Byrne and Michael Kelly in B.P. Walter’s The Woman on the Pier. We had mixed reviews about the last B.P. Walter book we read, The Dinner Guest, but were keen to give him another go in this story that promised to be dark, gripping, suspenseful and full of generational secrets and deceit. How did this crime thriller stack up against our expectations? Join us today at What We Reading for our The Woman on the Pier book review to find out!
Date Published: 2021
Author: B.P. Walter
Genre: Crime, Thriller
Pages: 400
Goodreads Rating: 3.28/5
Premise
Screenwriter Caroline Byrne and her husband, Alec, are still reeling from the death of their teenage daughter. Jessica was supposed to be staying with her friend in Somerset but had been killed in Stratford. After discovering a series of messages between Jessica and a boy named Michael, Caroline realises it’s because of him that her daughter died. Because he didn’t meet her on the day they had arranged.
Knowing that he is responsible for Jessica’s death, Caroline upends her life and travels to Southend where Michael lives. She is determined to meet him, to inform him of what he has done, and to make him pay.
What Worked
The Woman on the Pier is easily one of the darkest and most emotionally gut-punching we’ve read in some time. B.P. Walter never shies away from tackling some heavy subjects, and the overarching message of The Woman on the Pier can shine through because of that. We all go looking for something to blame when something harrowing happens, and this hunt so often leads to a neverending rabbit hole that soon becomes futile.
This book is set up to be a tragedy from the get-go. Caroline’s journey always feels hopeless, and it’s an arc that is consistently carried throughout the story.
Walter’s writing style is also incredibly readable; this was not a book we struggled to pick up and dive into. We’ll get into the problems with labelling this a ‘thriller’ or ‘mystery’ below, but something was gripping and engrossing about following Caroline’s destructive journey that we thoroughly enjoyed. Walter’s use of symbolism was also a really nice way of selling the mood and complex, profound emotions of a moment.
The first half of the book is probably where The Woman on the Pier shines the most in how it conveys the aftermath of tragedy, and how relationships can shatter in the aftermath.
What Didn’t
The Woman on the Pier is a book that has almost every trigger warning possible crammed into its 400 pages. It is not an easy read. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with having difficult scenes in a book that is as heart-wrenching as this, but there are instances where some naturally shine through more than others. For instance, the relationship between Michael and his brother, Evan, made for some of the most profound interactions in the whole story but isn’t given as much fleshing out as it could have done.
The pacing of the book overall also felt somewhat off-balance the further along the story got. The actual pier interaction (the one the title, you know, sells) only lasts two pages or so. We get a lot of time on Caroline buying a television for her hotel room, but hardly anything on the biggest reveals and the aftermath of the climax.
Finally, the characters. It’s clear B.P. Walter wanted to make all the characters in the story as damaged and broken as possible. Naturally so too, given what they’ve been through. And just because you don’t like a character doesn’t mean they can’t be layered and interesting to read. Unfortunately for Caroline, she is far from the best female protagonist we’ve read. It often feels like she’s going into situations looking to fight and argue with someone, she makes odd decisions and has an air of entitlement that makes her hard to relate to.
Verdict
As we said with our The Launch Party review, The Woman on the Pier is a book that suffers from being mismarketed. The actual pier sequence itself is brief, and the story itself is much more of a slow-burning domestic tragedy rather than a fast-paced thriller.
There are a lot of hard things to read in The Woman on the Pier, but there are so many components thrown in, it does leave some feeling more outshone than others. None of the revelations or reveals are especially jaw-dropping, they are mostly well-teased as you progress, and the overall pacing of the book also felt mistimed, especially across the second half.
But, whilst Caroline as a character was hard for us to either root for or relate to, B.P. Walter does succeed in setting up and following through on a story for her that was always heading for disaster. Her traits and flaws are prominent throughout, which makes her journey a mostly fitting one.
Overall, The Woman on the Pier probably falls short compared to The Dinner Guest. It’s an engrossing dark and melancholic look at the struggle of recovery, but the sheer amount of subplots means that it misses out on being as accomplished as it could have been.
Our Rating: 3/5
Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
