Andrea Bartz continues to explore complicated female relationships in her works, laced with suspense and sinister overtones, which expand the usual range of emotions women generally have in fiction. I always enjoy seeing what she’s cooked up between her female characters. The Spare Room differs from Bartz’s other works in that it incorporates the pandemic and its sequestering of people which throws folks together—and keeps them in close proximity—under usual circumstances. Those social challenges, combined with a failed relationship cause Kelly, the protagonist, to leave her boyfriend (Mike) in Philadelphia and move to the suburbs of Washington, DC, to live with a former schoolmate (Sabrina) and her husband (Nathan).
None of these main characters are particularly appealing: all are unreliable, no one is fully whom they seem to be, and the relationships in which they engage are toxic. Kelly, at 34, is annoying, primarily because she has all the emotional maturity of a twelve-year-old. Her thoughts yo-yo between sorrow at breaking up with Mike (though she admits to his emotional immaturity and temper issues) and joy at discovering a new relationship with Sabrina and Nathan (again, her thoughts yo-yo between seeing the couple as fabulous new love interests and fears that they aren’t as fully invested in her as she is with them, nor are they telling her the truth about incidents in their past.)
Bartz moves into more sexual arenas in The Spare Room, including a threesome, which some readers might find offensive, but I didn’t find that outrageous. The final chapters reveal a totally unexpected twist, one for which the foundation wasn’t laid quite well enough. An epilogue fills in a bunch of blanks the reader may have had. It seems as if Bartz was trying to hard to tie up all the loose ends in her novel. Personally, I would have preferred these left open-ended. However, the writing is smart with some lovely one-liners, and the tension well ramped-up.
********************
The Spare Room (Ballantine Books, June 20, 2023) is available through:
********************
This post may contain Amazon Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I may earn a small amount from qualifying purchases at no cost to you.
