The Procrastinators Book Club discussion

Welcome to the Behind Her Eyes Buddy Read Discussion thread! This thread officially opens on February 3rd and anyone can join at any time. Please keep in mind that spoilers are allowed in this thread but only up to the group's current reading place. Do not spoil the book if you've read further than the group. Any extra days can be used to catch up!

Each day we will be reading by chapters or page numbers. Page numbers are an approximation based on the hardcover or paperback that is the default on Goodreads. The suggested Buddy Read discussion schedule is as follows:

Week of 02/03
February 3rd: chapters 1-8
February 4th: chapters 9-17

Week of 02/05
February 5th: chapters 18-24
February 6th: chapters 25-30
February 7th: chapters 31-38
February 8th: chapters 39-46
February 9th: chapters 47-51
February 10th: chapters 52-end

PARTICIPANTS
~ Sophie
~ Juliane

I'd like to join in! :)

Hi! Thought I’d drop in with my thoughts :)

Chapters 1-8

So far I literally have no idea who to trust or any theories of what’s actually going to happen. I know that there is a movie(?) for this book out, but I’m saving it until I have finished the book. Have either of you got any theories?

Hello together :-)

I haven't seen the filmed version either so I went in totally blind as well and I'm totally with you, I have so many more questions than currently theories but in these first 8 chapters nothing is yet quite clear enough. I'm also not quite sure about the time-line yet to be honest.

Up to chapter 8
(view spoiler)[Adele clearly has a traumatic past considering what we know about her parents and how they died in that fire that she apparently slept through though I'm wondering if she had something to do with their deaths.
Especially in relation to chapter 2 which seems to be set in the future where David buries something or someone?
I mean for all we know at the moment he could have simply been burying someones run-over household pet or something equally benign thats just heightened by the way the chapter is narrated but I'm guessing its going to be something more sinister especially since i don't think it's mentioned who actually the narrator was of that first Later-chapter. (hide spoiler)]

Hey :)

From my POV, I feel like Adele is the shadiest of the bunch. So much trauma, yes... But I also have a feeling that she might have put a lot of that in motion.
I don't particularly like any of the three main characters, but so far I prefer Louise over the two others :-)
What about you guys?

Having read up to chapter 16 I agree that Louise is so far the more symapthetic and "normal" character out of the main three. Her story seems quite typical for a single mom in a big city although while I understand how difficult it can be to find new friends the older one gets I do sometimes find her to be a little too naive, especially when it comes to her growing relationship with Adele and the communication with David.

Adeles chapters are beginning to creep me out a little, like that woman seems to have so many loose screws.
Also even with her issues the obsession she has for Louise seems a bit too much for it to be just be explained by Louise being her husbands secretary I think.
So what do you guys think does she actually know about what happened between David and Louise the first night those two met? Or is she generally just the kind of person who seems to turn into stalker-territory?

David on the other hand is still very much an opaque character for me since the narration of Adele and Louise is sometimes extremely tumbling between gushing, anger and fear, it is very hard to know how much of his charaterisation so far seems truly real.

Hi! Just read up to chapter 25. I’ll put my thoughts in a spoiler just incase either of you aren’t up to date

(view spoiler)[ Isabella I definitely agree with you that Adele is the shadiest of them all at the moment. It’s coming across to me as though she’s trying to push Louise into David’s arms so she can get out the toxic, controlling and probably abusive marriage. I feel like there is a lot we’re not seeing regarding Adele, especially considering we don’t have David’s pov. I do also think she planted some sort of camera or listening device in Louise’s apartment when she went there because she knows far too many details.

Juliane, I think that burying thing was mentioned to be a cat, and they got into some sort of argument about it? Correct me if I’m wrong. I’d love to see David and Adele’s arguments that are so frequently discussed. Maybe Adele is psychotic, maybe they don’t actually happen at all.

I think maybe, despite no hints to this, that there is some big secret in Louise’s past that we don’t know about yet. She seems too normal for a main character in a thriller lmao. (hide spoiler)]

Let me know your thoughts! :)

Hey, how are you two doing with the book?

I have to admit I am currently at a point where I despise all three main characters and I hope the big twist will be that they all just get run over or something to be done with all their crap 😅
To be fair I don't dislike the book and its story at this point I just wanna shake everyone to come to their sense ;-)

The following thoughts can go up to chapter 35

(view spoiler)[
I actually hope at this point that Louise has some big secret because some of her decisions ever since she started an actual affair with David have been for me bordering on the edge of stupid, I can't even call just naive anymore. On the one side I admire that she wants to help Adele when she thinks she might be in an abusive relationship. On the other hand the way she finds excuses and talks herself out of clearing up the whole mess by trying to find a way to step away from either David or Adele or preferably both of them started to really annoy me, including the dismissal of her old friends advice.

Sophie, I totally agree Adele must have planted something either in Louise flat or on David or maybe both because she knows way too much about what has been going on in their affair.
I find the theory of her doing all those things to get out of her own abusive marriage very interesting, it would be a different kind of crazily malicious than her doing it for revenge because her husband has an affair.

Thanks for your comment regarding the cat I caught up on that now. Which means we have two instances of the burying/digging in the garden in the story so far right? Adele burying the cat in their current home in the now-timeline but also chapter 2 where David is doing something in the garden apparently in a time that hasn't happened yet? Please let me know if I'm misunderstanding that part of the story.

I hate Davids self-righteousness when he finds out that Louise and Adele are friends, like that man is a psychiatrist and yet communication in his own life seems to be a massive problem for him, especially as he knows so much more about Adele than Louise possibly could. He is the one having an affair (not that I condone Louises part in that) with his secretary and he knows Adele for so long and yet he blames it all on Louise as if she is the only one keeping secrets. Him asking her to quit is such a massive red flag and such an arsehole-move on his part.

Is Adele having a psychotic break or is it all just in her head or something? Also did David actually hit her or did she give herself the bruise on her face, the story seems to suggest that it wasn't actually something he did or maybe this is just due to Adeles POV who is clearly such a unreliable narrator.
(hide spoiler)]

I have still so many questions :-)
Looking forward to reading what you think.

Up to chapter 39 now, many thoughts

(view spoiler)[ Ok, to start, we have more clarification on the cat (if David’s notes are to be trusted), it was Adele that apparently kicked and killed it and David buried it? I think that was the gist of it.

What really confuses me and simultaneously concerns me at the moment is the deal with the night terrors/ sleep walking and the notebook. I don’t think that Adele is trying to help Louise with her sleeping problems, but I don’t know what her end goal with it is. I have no idea as to how Louise having night terrors and sleep walking benefits Adele in any way.

At this point I definitely think that Adele is the one giving herself black eyes. I can’t remember what chapter it was, but in Adele’s pov, she mentioned that she had asked David’s patient (I can’t remember his name, he was the one she opened the door to with a black eye, when he was trying to speak to David) to hide a package for her. God only knows what was in that package. How did she manage to have frequent enough contact to arrange something like that?

My current working theory; Adele is a sociopath/psychopath who killed her parents for trying to keep Adele and David apart (rightly so, weird age gap and power dynamics), she called David when she did it, letting him know nothing was standing in their way. He covered for her and saw that she was unhinged and/or easy to manipulate/control thus putting her into a mental facility to prevent any further problems. I think maybe Adele killed Rob (I think that’s his name)? Maybe? I’m unsure. Possibly to protect David. Or she got fed up of his accusations and questions. His whereabouts are a big question mark right now. Adele, as mentioned by David has extremely violent tendencies, especially towards other women, hence the constant moving. Who knows if David actually had affairs with those other women. I know it seems likely that he did due to his situation with Louise, however, he may have just hit breaking point. That could be the reason for his drinking and attempts to control Adele, stress and worries that she’s going to do something crazy. Maybe he’s the one who needs an escape from the marriage. He could truly love Louise and is trying to protect her from Adele, by firing her. I have literally zero idea as to what Adele’s or any of the other characters endgames are. (hide spoiler)]

Hello again :-)

I'm up to chapter 45 and it is safe to say that I can't imagine how things could possibly still get any weirder than they are right now, especially considering that this book was always advertised regarding having a big twist at the end.

Thoughts on this are currently all over the place:

(view spoiler)[ How can Louise be so gullible, Adele has really manipulated her so much but I think some of it is still way to easy the way Louise takes everything Adele does at face value even through all the warning signs. The way she snapped at her former best friend and was even annoyed at her own son for disrupting her research was really disturbing.

Also I'm still undecided if Adele is the one who is most likely killing people, I'm definitely counting her parents here and most likely Rob, and David is trying to cover for her because he actually loved her at some point or if he did any of the killing, like Adele claims with Rob, to protect his wife.

Unless the big twist at the end will be that Rob is still alive and can bring them both down and they got him prisoner in the estate or something, which is why David doesn't want to sell it, but that seems like a huge amount of cover up even more difficult than burying a body on such a huge estate. Plus it would mean that Adele most likely sees it as a twisted game in which she wants to get caught, seeing how often she mentiones that she needs Louise for her marriage to be better.

Sophie, I agree regarding Adele, I think sociopath or psychopath is completely applicable to her. Though it always amazes me how long people like that can keep up the facade but thats probably why she needs David so badly.

The age gap in itselt wouldn't bother me if they had met when she was an adult but the way she said in an earlier chapter that she fell directly in love with him at the age of 8 is so icky, like i get childhood crushes but normally one grows out of them while for her it seems to have become an obsession so early on.
Plus I don't understand how David could have gone along with any of it he must have known early own that that wasn't normal.

But he ist so complicit in everything, like did he become a doctor despite Adele or because of her? He is clearly educated enough to know all the signs from early on and yet he ist still going along even though people have definitely gotten hurt, I wonder if he actually stopped loving Adele or if he is in any way disgusted with himself. Both of which would to some extend point towards having more than one affair in my opinion as his way of getting space but knowing that his wife will most likely hurt or ruin the woman he cheats with makes him even more suspicious.

Also agree the dreaming thing is getting so weird, there is no way this is actualy helping Louise in the way Adele presents it to her. The dreaming is by now such a prominent part of the story I'm seriously questioning its point and where this is going. The out-of body experience makes me wonder if Adele is trying to drive Louise insane but other than revenge for sleeping with her husband I have no real theory as to the why, unless the whole point is that Adele herself is insane and just enjoys toying with people that way.

Furthermore I find it eerie how many parallels there are between Rob and Louise, the whole being manipulated by Adele in a time in their lifes when they were really quite vulnerable (which I have to admit does explain a little how it is so easy for Adele), the dreaming where Rob also found a second door for some reason. How close they got to Adele because they think she was a decent, nice person who only wants to help. It makes me shudder to think what Adele might have planned for Louise as endgame but I currently don't have any real theories either, everything is just too disjointed.

(hide spoiler)]

I just finished and excuse my language but what the fuck did I just read?

Spoilers up till the ending
(view spoiler)[
I don't even know how to put my absolute hatred for this ending into proper words yet, mainly the whole dream-walking-body-change-crap, so I might have to get back on that but I can honestly say that I never could have guessed this as the twist to come.
Also I can't remember the last time I actually felt the physical need to throw a book through the room and just get it as far away from me as possible 😤

I had hopes for a couple of chapters when Louise and David had their talk and David finally wanted to do the right thing that there would at least be some reckoning for everyone involved. To be fair I don't always need the good guys to win (good in this story being relative anyway) and I would have even been fine if Adele had somehow managed to escaped while David had gone to prison or something but this is beyond screwed up.

I already despised how it ended with Adele switching with Louise but that last chapter with Rob, like what the hell.

Poor Adam, my heart hurts for him.
(hide spoiler)]

I don't even know how to rate the book yet, I'm sorry for this rather disjointed update but I had to leave my first thoughts on this 😅

No I completely agree with you

(view spoiler)[ That ending was atrocious. Like I actually don’t think I have the words. Don’t get me wrong I love shock endings, but this one just felt lazy. Particularly the ‘Rob’ part of the ending, which did read as a little rushed. Does it mean this book is classified as more of a horror/paranormal read? Because it’s completely illogical. There must be at least three different and better endings I’ve come up with since finishing. I really feel for Adam :(

I’m definitely now going to have to watch the Netflix adaptation to see how closely it follows the book and how it’s portrayed on screen. (hide spoiler)]

I also have ZERO idea what to rate this one. I’m kinda leaning to a 2.5?

The rating thing really has me puzzled since I also quite enjoyed the book until the last two chapters.
But I'm probably going to end with two stars too even though the ending properly ruined it for me and I think lazy is a really good word for that.
(view spoiler)[
I actually checked the main/first tags for the book on here after I finished reading and even the horror/mystery tags don't really grasp the issue with the ending for me. Adele/Robs insanity would have very well pushed into horror-territory for me without the whole dreaming thing. I agree paranormal is probably the most fitting though I have to admit I don't know how I would have felt knowing about such a part being in the book beforehand.

Also agree my mind is going overdrive with ideas for an ending that would have actually made so much more sense without including the whole body-switching, I just can't wrap my mind around that one, even with the lucid-dreaming hints we had beforehand.

Since it is a TV-show with like 6 episodes that definitely leaves more room for development and there is certainly a lot of possibility for interesting visualisation of the whole dreaming one would hope.
(hide spoiler)]

But it was fun to bandy around theories just to see them all completely disintegrated in the end 😄

🤣🤣🤣
The moment I saw this is going to be a buddy read I was curious to see your reactions for the ending.
I read it a few years back and it was alright, if I'm going to judge it now based on the rating I gave, but I remember hating the end and being WTF