56 Days

Hi! And welcome to this month’s episode of the Exploring Reader! If you’ve listened to the July episode, you know we’re gonna talk about 56 Days, a thriller by Catherine Ryan Howard for the month of August. Today, I’m doing a reverse of what we did last month. Every Summer After was a good book, but a bad show. Well now… 56 Days is a great show and a unimpressive book. I was quite disappointed to having read the novel and it being a step down from the TV show.

56 Days is a thriller/mystery novel that follows Ciara Wyse and Oliver Kennedy, two strangers who start dating during the onset of the COVID lockdown in Ireland, 56 days ago. Today, police officers discover a decomposing corpse in an apartment and they are trying to piece together what happened.

As I’ve made it obvious, I discovered the book through the Amazon Prime show of the same name. I was scrolling for something to watch when I landed on the show. It attracted my attention because I remember thinking Dove Cameron was the perfect cast for a thriller. Her new aesthetic fits right into the genre. And boy, was I impressed. The ending of the show is completely unexpected and it really raised the bar for me. Then I picked up the book. At first it started quite the same as the show with really minor changes. I kept reading thinking that I’ll eventually get to the part where the police assumptions are wrong and we get to see the real killer and who the victim is. But the book, just ended with the killer being either Ciara or Oliver as we would assume and the victim being the other. I will concede that at first it wasn’t obvious who the killer was. The author used negations and vague comments with lots of room for interpretation that did mislead the readers. That was really great. I felt very impressed with her use of language because it unconsciously pushed us to make quick assumptions without a second thought. It’s much cooler to read it for a second time or if you already know the plot. So all in all, the plot was a flop for me. Now was it a flop because I had high expectations from a show that completely re-wrote the ending or is it a flop because it’s just a plain mystery novel?

The ending of the show is completely unexpected and it really raised the bar for me. Then I picked up the book.

I like Ciara’s character in both the book and the show. She is really cunning, resourceful, motivated, and quick on her feet. Oliver was more honourable in the show. He really doesn’t have a lot of redeeming qualities in the novel. He is constantly paranoid, but also not actively trying to build a new life for himself. It seems to me like he’s just constantly on the run and wanting to hide forever, instead of actively trying to improve his situation and settle down somewhere.

For the setting, I will say that it’s really really freaky to have it set during the pandemic. It feels like a while ago, but also too soon to have it as the backdrop for stories. I think it was a good way to create an excuse for the close proximity that forces the characters to live in the same apartment. On the other hand, the show characterized Oliver in such a way that he is desperate for a change of lifestyle and it feels normal for his character to ask Ciara to stay with him so early in their relationship.

I’m going to end the episode here today because there’s not much I can keep saying without spoiling the mystery to you. The novel is ok for thriller lovers or if you want something different than those cheesy mystery books that pop up like Hallmark Christmas movies. Stay tuned for the September episode on The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood.

Until then, keep exploring those pages!