Despite the title and the cover, and maybe the tagline "Lenny Marks is excellent at not having a life", this book, it turned out is not a cozy mystery, a quirky outing nor is it a thriller or a rom-com. What it is is rather harder to pinpoint though as this debut was is an exploration of a neuro-divergent life that is complicated, emotional and sometimes heartbreaking.
Which is why my choice of media for this - an audio book - was not the best option for this reader, because I just wanted to go back too often to check what it was I should have heard, but obviously missed.
Hence it hasn't been mentioned here before and this note is intended less as a review and more a reminder that it's lurking there, back on Mt TBR because it deserved closer attention than the audio allowed me to achieve.
Lenny Marks Gets Away with Murder
Lenny Marks is excellent at not having a life.
She bikes home from work at exactly 4pm each day, buys the same groceries for the same meals every week, and owns thirty-six copies of The Hobbit (currently arranged by height). The closest thing she has to a friendship is playing Scrabble against an imaginary Monica Gellar while watching Friends reruns.
And Lenny Marks is very, very good at not remembering what happened the day her mother and stepfather disappeared when she was still a child. The day a voice in the back of her mind started whispering, You did this.
Until a letter from the parole board arrives in the mail—and when her desperate attempts to ignore it fail, Lenny starts to unravel. As long-buried memories come to the surface, Lenny’s careful routines fall apart. For the first time, she finds herself forced to connect with the community around her, and unexpected new relationships begin to bloom. Lenny Marks may finally get a life—but what if her past catches up to her first?
Equal parts heartbreaking and heartwarming, Kerryn Mayne’s stunning debut is an irresistible novel about truth, secrets, vengeance, and family lost and found, with a heroine who's simply unforgettable.
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