One Tuesday, Early by Annalisa Crawford - Book Review

Publication Date: 14th May 2024

Genre: Psychological Thriller

3.5 stars (rounded up) 

One Liner: Great effort but misses the mark 

It's early morning, 6.05 AM, when Lexi finds herself home, alone with absolutely no one anywhere around. She is stuck in time and has to find a way out. But what happened to her? 

Finn, Lexi’s partner, doesn’t remember much about the previous night. He realizes Lexi is not home. She vanished. Where is Lexi? What happened? As Finn goes deeper into depression and swims back to the surface, years pass by. Lexi is still not found. 

Can the two ever unite? 

The story comes in Finn’s third-person POV and Lexi’s second-person POV. 

My Thoughts: 

After enjoying the author’s short stories, I was excited to read a longer piece by her. This thriller is of the right length, neither too long nor too short. 

It’s a bit hard to review this as there’s a risk of revealing a spoiler. 

The narration is on the slower side but doesn’t drag. Finn’s chapters are faster, given the POV and the events. Time is erratic, so you have to pay attention. It goes slowly at first and then jumps years. 

Lexi’s POV is tricky. I love the attempt at doing something different (it’s a brave decision). However, the results didn’t entirely work for me. I enjoyed the first couple of chapters but couldn't connect with it. The repetition doesn’t help, either. Removing a couple of these chapters and expanding on the main narrative might have helped. Reworking the chapters to provide more details about Lexi and removing some of the repetition would also have helped. 

I also like the reveal, though we can guess it from the beginning. There’s no attempt to hide the details from the readers or throw in an unbelievable twist. The twist is subtle but well done. 100% marks for this. It also brings a sense of freshness to the tried-and-tested plotline.

The atmosphere is terrific. This is something I expect from the author’s work by default. She is great with darkish and foggy settings, the kind where anything can happen. 

A few other elements aren’t convincing. I have many doubts about these aspects but cannot reveal them. I wish those got more attention as they are important in a thriller. This would have been easily 4+ stars otherwise. 

To summarize, One Tuesday, Early is a brave attempt to present a known story in a different manner. It could have been better, but it does offer an enjoyable reading experience. 

My thanks to BookSirens and the author for eARC.