Weekly Reader: A Simple Favor by Darcey Bell; An Engaging But Deeply Flawed Psychological Thriller About A Toxic Friendship

Weekly Reader: A Simple Favor by Darcey Bell; An Engaging But Deeply Flawed Psychological Thriller About A Toxic Friendship

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews




Spoilers: How well do we know the people we term our “best friends?” Do we know their childhoods and if there were any traumas that caused them to be the way they are now? Do we know if there are any oddities or issues in their current lives to cause them to do seemingly crazy things? How far would we go to help them?




These questions are asked in Darcey Bell’s engaging and thought provoking but at times flawed novel, A Simple Favor. Stephanie is a widowed “mommy blogger” who posts entries about the pleasures and difficulties of raising children. One day picking up her son, Miles from school she meets Emily, the mother of Miles’ best friend, Nicky.




Emily is everything that Stephanie isn't. Where Stephanie is casual and naive, Emily is refined and elegant. While Stephanie spends her time in Connecticut blogging advice to other moms about quality time with children and keeping them entertained in the summer, Emily works for a fashion designer in Manhattan. While Stephanie mourns her deceased husband, Davis and her half-brother,Chris who was her “best friend”, Emily appears happily married to Sean, a British architect.




Despite their differences, Stephanie and Emily retain a close friendship until one day when Emily calls Stephanie for a simple favor: could Stephanie pick up Nicky from school and keep him at her place until Emily comes and gets him? Stephanie agrees and waits for Emily. And waits. And waits.

Emily is eventually declared officially missing and the plot follows briskly along through several questions. Where did Emily go and is she coming back? What about that life insurance policy that Sean took out in her name? What about that dead body at Emily and Sean's cabin? Was it Emily and if so how did she die?




While the plot is pretty suspenseful, the strongest suspense is found in the characters particularly Stephanie and Emily. The female deuteragonists are experts at acting in one way and behaving differently.




While Stephanie appears to be a bubbly naive former housewife in her blog, the chapters which report her thoughts give a different portrayal to her public persona. She announces to her fellow moms in her blog that she and Sean have decided to move in together. She states “the heart wants what it wants” and that she and Sean want to give Miles and Nicky some stability. What she fails to tell her blog readers but tells the novel’s Reader is that she has been in love with Sean since Emily's disappearance and they slept together many times before they made it official.




The strongest difference between Stephanie's public and private persons deals with her feelings for her late husband, Davis and half-brother, Chris. She posts a half-truth on her blog that the two had an argument and drove off to the nearest steakhouse when they were killed in a traffic collision.

What Stephanie doesn't tell her blog readers is that she and Chris had a sexual affair from the time they met as adults and realized they had the same father but different mothers. (Even weirder part of the reason, she is so fond of Sean is he reminds her of Chris.) She also recalls that Davis found out about the incestuous affair and planned on killing Chris taking himself with him.




Emily also keeps her true feelings concealed to all but the novel's Readers. She is much like Amy Elliot Dunne in Gone Girl in that she is a maestro at manipulating people into doing what she wants. She appears to have had s cultured sophisticated background free of any close family members. However, the Reader learns she had abusive parents and a weak-willed drug addicted sister that Emily loves but doesn't mind using for her personal needs.

While Emily compliments Stephanie to her face calling her solid and dependable, privately she thinks she's witless and boring but the perfect unseeming patsy for her schemes. She is skilled at using people to get what she wants: independence, freedom, money, and eventually custody of Nicky.




While A Simple Favor is strong in terms of characterizing it's two lead characters, it falters in many ways. When we find out about the reason behind Emily's disappearance, it is hoary and clichéd, and is extremely familiar to viewers of film noir and detective novels of the ‘20’s and ‘30’s. (That's how long this plot angle has been around.) While Stephanie's incestuous affair does a good job of capturing her character, there is no resolution to it. It just becomes a red herring and a missed opportunity to the point it was almost unnecessary.




The ending also leaves something to be desired as another dead body is found and more questions are raised. There is no finality as once again Emily and Stephanie open up new revelations about themselves that have no time to be resolved.