Fear - Dirk Kurbjuweit Review

"You'd die for your family. But would you kill for them?

Family is everything.
So what if yours was being terrorised by a neighbour - a man who doesn't listen to reason, whose actions become more erratic and sinister with each passing day? And those you thought would help - the police, your lawyer - can't help you.
You become afraid to leave your family at home alone. But there's nothing more you can do to protect them.
Is there?"
 

Thank you to NetGalley and Orion Books for providing me with an ARC! All opinions are honest and my own. This isn't released until January 25th 2018 and can be pre-ordered from Amazon UK for kindle and in paperback.

Reading the synopsis, I went into this thinking it was going to be a tense, fast-paced thriller however I was left disappointed. This was an interesting read nevertheless however it was not the one that I was expecting.

This story follows Randolph and their family as they move into their new home only for them to be stalked by their neighbour who lives in the basement. He sends’ Randolph’s wife letters and poems, spies on the family and even reports them to authorities with false accusations. This all sounds quite chilling and terrifying especially when since this story is loosely based off the Authors own experiences with being stalked by his neighbour. You already know how this is going to end in a sense, as this book begins with his father in prison and you find out early on why he is in prison.

The writing of this made it feel a lot more like an autobiography than a fictional story which is what I was expecting or really wanting. This is only confirmed with all the backstory which is littered throughout the plot about Randolph’s childhood and growing up and also his father’s passion for guns. Whilst some these backstories were interesting, they did pull away from the main plot and I didn’t find a lot of them useful to the main plot line of the stalking neighbour. I understand that a lot of the backstory about Randolph’ relationship with his father were meant to lend to how his father perhaps helped him with fixing the neighbour problem but a lot of it could have been cut out to make for a more streamlined story. 

I feel like this book did portray “fear” itself well and how it can have an effect on how you act both in the moment and also how it effects your everyday life. The false accusations make Randolph start questioning whether what he’s doing is wrong even though he knows what he’s doing is 100% right and OK and he starts overthinking everything that he does and how other people will see him doing these things.

This wasn’t a bad book itself and I didn’t see the twist at the end of the book coming either. I enjoyed how it went on to explain how life after the stalking incident and twist is like and as mentioned, shows how much fear can affect you even when the threat of the fear has disappeared. I just didn’t enjoy the way this was written and how much backstory was involved which I didn’t feel was necessary. As this was a translation from the original language of German, maybe some of the flow of the main plot and back story was lost? Or maybe that’s how the Author intended it to be, who knows? Either way, the writing wasn’t for me, but I did enjoy the actual storyline.