This book made me excited to read again. I had to switch to audiobook up until the final few chapters because I caught myself skimming ahead on pages trying to anticipate what was going to happen. An excellent example of reader-stays-in-the-dark until the finale. The writing flowed well and was easy to read/listen to, maybe almost too easy with how quickly I finished this book. I'm tempted to read it again know with the knowledge of how it ends.

Really looking forward to reading more from this author!

(And yes, you may) This was Pomare's debut, and my fourth Pomare. I was pretty blown away by the others, so my expectations were pretty high. But this, although not long, felt drawn out in the middle. The story is told "before" and "after" an incident, and everything is very vague, and in the end, not well wrapped up. It's not terrible, but since i expected more from Pomare i rounded my 3.5 stars down.

Merged review:

(And yes, you may) This was Pomare's debut, and my fourth Pomare. I was pretty blown away by the others, so my expectations were pretty high. But this, although not long, felt drawn out in the middle. The story is told "before" and "after" an incident, and everything is very vague, and in the end, not well wrapped up. It's not terrible, but since i expected more from Pomare i rounded my 3.5 stars down.

Marketed under the banner "incredible new literary thriller", CALL ME EVIE is the debut novel of New Zealand born, Melbourne based writer J.P. Pomare.

Opening in a manner guaranteed to make readers feel maximum discomfort, a young woman is in a bathroom, hacking at her long hair with a pair of small scissors when she's interrupted by an angry man, shouting and finishing the job roughly with a pair of hair clippers. She screams, he hits, neither of them clearly identified, the relationship and the power dynamic not explained. Gradually snippets of detail emerge, the pair are hiding out in a small town in New Zealand, avoiding something in the past, some never fully articulated threat, just "they" might find "them".

Putting aside the never-ending discussions of why "literary" and what it's telegraphing about the position of crime fiction in the literary world (let's just leave sales figures and reader engagement to speak for themselves), there is much about CALL ME EVIE that's classic psychological thriller, and much that's slightly different and cleverly constructed. Construction is possibly the key point here, the book is divided into parts, with the chapters within the parts headed "before <" and "> after". Told in the voice of central character "Kate / Evie" the action moves between these timelines. "before <" is all about her life as a teenager in Melbourne, daughter of a former sports star father, and a mother who died when she was a very young child. In this viewpoint she's a stereotypical teenager, struggling with one of those all too common bitchy all-encompassing friendships that are toxic and unbreakable when you're that age, as well as her growing attraction to "the" boy in their social circle. It's littered with the sorts of issues you'd expect of teenagers nowadays - access to phones, complicated engagements with parents, fraught social pressures, emerging independence and conflicts around love and developing sexual identity. The "> after" viewpoint is all set within the escape hole of New Zealand, and Kate/Evie's voice is more hesitant, more damaged, scared, vulnerable and obviously haunted by something that's happened in the recent past. Her relationship with the controlling and sometimes quite compassionate man isn't explained, her status of victim / captive / co-conspirator hard to define.

And from there we really must leave discussions of plot elements as the power of CALL ME EVIE is in how the reader isn't supposed to be sure what, exactly, is going on with Kate / Evie. There are definitely points in the narrative that you would be well within their rights to make some educated guesses, but you may also find yourself swept into the storyline so comprehensively that there's more page-turning happening than thoughtful contemplation. For this reader there was also the odd point at which the narrative dragged a bit, and a feeling of being overtly manipulated snuck into play.

CALL ME EVIE is however a powerful psychological thriller, exploring the complications of memory (as hinted at in the opening quotations). But it's memory in all it's false, guilty, happy, searching, fragmented, convenient and confrontational guises.

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/call-me-evie-jp-pomare

Boring, long and predictable

i found this book poorly executed tbh, the plot was dragged out and the characters seemed pretty one dimensional for the most part

Imagine, if you will, that you have been taken away to another country and forced to live in an isolated cabin in a small beach town where you don't know anyone.  You've essentially been kidnapped, but the person who took you swears that they are isolating you to protect you.  To make matters even worse, you can't recall enough about what happened before you left the country to know for sure. All you truly know is that your ex-boyfriend was attacked, later died, and the person who whisked you away says that many people believe you are to blame.  This is Evie's life.  Though Evie isn't even her real name.  Nor is her "Uncle Jim" really her uncle -- or named Jim, for that matter.  Her real name is Kate Bennett and she is doing her best to piece together her memories of what actually happened.  

Perhaps other readers will figure things out more quickly than me, but I was shocked when I finally realized that my assumption of Jim's identity and his motives had been so wrong for so long.  Aside from the twists and turns of the story itself, this book also included some fascinating information about post traumatic stress, how memories are made, and how the mind can be manipulated.  

Happy Reading!

This book kept me interested. It started off intriguing, but the main story is based around Evie aka Kate, being controlled by Jim in a house in NZ they’ve fled to from Melbourne after Kate did something horrendous.
We follow Kate as she tries to remember in the ‘after’ chapters, and we read what happens leading up to it in the ‘before’ chapters.
It does get a little monotonous, we spend the whole book inside a house with Evie/Kate escaping every now and then.
The big surprise was that ‘Jim’ her ‘uncle’ was actually her dad who was keeping her captive.
All along we thought it was willow’s dad but it was her dad. Not sure which storyline would of been better.
It was sad to learn about the history of Kate’s mum, and it makes sense why her dad needed her to take the meds.
In the end we find out Thom (kates ex boyfriend) leaked a sex tape of them and then leaked she was dating her best friends dad, in a drunken rage she stole her dads car and went to meet Thom. With Kate’s dad admitting to the murder and going to jail, we are to believe he did it in the name of his daughter and the whole time he was protecting her, but then we realise it was Kate who killed Thom and he took the blame.
It sounds like a good ending but the book wasn’t captivating enough to really do the storyline justice.

I spoke too soon….
Still gripping, but it felt clunky. There were so many themes that were trying to be covered, extra characters that I still don’t know what their purposes were and plot holes. I’m still not really sure what the ending implied, it left me confused about earlier on.

Really 4.5 stars. I haven’t read a book basically in on sitting in a long time.