WHAT I KNOW ABOUT JULY, stalking is a real, dangerous crime with consequences

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT JULY
KAT HAUSLER
Meerkat Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$18.95 paperback, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Simon Kemper is on the up and up–he’s out of rehab, and his band is gaining moderate success around Berlin. But out of the corner of his eye and over his shoulder, he’s always aware of her. The stalker. She’s at every show, no matter what city. She sends hundreds of postcards to his label. Worst of all, she acts like she knows him. Like she owns him.

When the stalker disappears at one of his shows, Simon is the prime suspect. Initially an effort to clear his name, his search for July quickly becomes a deeper psychological quest: to prove that his fears were warranted? That she couldn’t have given up her obsession that easily? The threads of July’s disappearance turn out to be tangled into every corner of Simon’s life: a trusted band member, a tenuous new love interest, a resentful ex, and the self he’s supposedly left behind.

Narcissistic, insecure, and consummately relatable, Simon is the anti-hero of his own life—trying to want to be better; hoping that’s enough.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Enjoyable story of a guy, pretty average musician, pretty average addict, making an effort to clean himself and his life up. Then there's the small issue of a woman obsessed with him, called July. There's a weirdness in her obsession: how does she know so much about him?

I really wouldn't like this oft-told tale much at all...why do men without much going for them seem to attract women so easily and then get them obsessed?...because it feels like fantasy fulfillment. Ever since Fatal Attraction it's been peopling the landscape of thrillerdom.

What caught my attention was the vanishing of July. I've been stalked online, I know the worst of it is the sheer absurdity of a person's unsought, unencouraged, obsession causing the object real consequences. But this story adds a different layer in the stalker vanishing and leaving a void that must be filled by some sort of legal resolution. This is Germany, after all, and there must always be a resolution or whatever rent on the social fabric it is remains open and actively pursued. July was always going to get a period at the end of her sentence in Simon's story.

That it proved to be a weirdly condign chapter, not sentence, in his story, one that involved unexpected other players and motives, was the reason I didn't dismiss the read. The reason thrillers satisfy me is they offer more...open-ended...solutions to the the grosser insults to Ma'at's order. In this story the results of the crime committed were equitably meted out. That they were also unorthodox felt much more satisfying than milder law-n-order solutions available to the author.

I was not initially drawn into the read. What happened was I had put the story down, thinking it would be another male-fantasy tropefest; I couldn't quite shake it though, kept processing it behind the noise of Life, because the author's a woman. Why would she choose to write that?

She didn't. I came back and finished the story thinking I'd at least get an answer to why one character felt...wrong...and, well, yes indeed that was the point. It wasn't clear to me why the ending was heading in a direction that seemed very much at odds with what I thought it was going to be. That was a satisfying twist, Author Hausler. I enjoyed it.

So, lesson learned: attend to the still, small voice that suggests you're not quite seeing what you think you are. A solidly crafted thriller about a dangerous crime that never gets the belief the victim deserves unless they're very lucky.