A Simple Favour ★★ ½ ☆☆ | Book Review

Summary

Emily asks for one favour from her friend, Stephanie... Can she pick up her son Nicky from school... and she does, but Emily doesn't come to pick him up. As the search for her continues it becomes evident to Stephanie that her friend wasn't all she appeared to be.

Review

I'm going to make a sincere effort to save movie comparisons for later and just focus on the book for now. I will say that the reason I got the book was because I saw the film and was intrigued to read the source material. I also listened to this with Whispersync.

The story is told from four perspectives in the book: Stephanie, Stephanie's blog, Emily and Sean. The first half being Stephanie, before switching to Emily and finishing with a mix of all of them. I enjoyed the mix of first person narratives and it worked particularly well with the audio version.

As a whole the book was very simple, and by that I mean it was very easy to listen to. Lots of people are comparing the story line idea (and the movie) to Gone Girl, but doing that is honestly insulting to Gone Girl. A Simple Favour is a chick lit thriller... which is something I never thought I'd hear myself say.

The language is very basic which makes it easy to follow, but it really doesn't fit in with all the characters. Stephanie's pieces all feel right but once we swap into Emily and Sean you'd expect the dialogue to be a little more complex but there's no real change at all. Generally the characters are very predictable and fairly one dimensional, Sean is also full of stereotypical British qualities which seem completely unnecessary.

There's also an immense amount of stuff crammed into this book. Murder, drugs, alcohol, incest, insurance fraud... at a certain point you're just not surprised when a new tidbit shows up.

The Movie

You can see my review of A Simple Favour with Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick over on my film blog, but here are some things I noticed after finishing the book.

Generally I would say that the book is better than the film... but these two things are so different that the direct comparison isn't really possible.

The only real similarity is that Emily fakes her own death to start a new life with Sean and Nicky with some insurance money. Stephanie is a vlogger rather than a blogger, which works better from a visual point throughout the film. Sean is a writer which makes him a much friendlier character than the professional version in the book. And in the book Emily is actually friendlier and a lot less crazy. Stephanie is also somewhat dumber and a lot more trusting.

I'd be really interested to know why they took it in the direction they did. You could have got a reasonably sexy thriller out of this and yet they chose to add in some comedy and knock up the sex to about 300%.

Which version?

The book is reasonable and isn't going to tax your brain. The film is going to make you want Blake Lively. Both have their merits, but neither are particularly groundbreaking. As I said before, the two products are very different so there are only two ways to make a decision about one over the other...

The ending: If you want a satisfying ending then go for the film as the book left a bitter taste in my mouth like the author was pegging her hopes on a sequel.

The length: Being that both are average you might want to consider how much time you want to "waste" on it. The film is just under two hours, if you listen to the book it's about nine.