I've always said that I really like to put myself in the shoes of the characters in the stories I read and try to feel what they feel in the books. I don't know if I like it because I know they are things that don't happen to me at the moment and it's a way of living them, or precisely because I know that, since they don't happen to me, I don't care what happens to others and that I find out about them. Well, I don't know if I've explained myself, but I hope to do so throughout this review.
And today I come to talk to you about X-rays, a book written by Pilar Ana Tolosana Artola that begins with the mystery of why its protagonist woke up with two plastered legs and doesn't remember anything about what happened.
Interesting, isn't it? Well, I'll say that the novel has a good rhythm and that we'll soon discover what's behind those plasters. We will soon be taking part in the research that herself is going to have to do and that she will have to carry out with care, because it turns out that there are more people involved than at first might seem, and because many people around her end up wounded or, worse still, dead. As soon as she leaves the hospital, where she coincides with Sonia, she sees an SUV run over her friend.
And you'll wonder who Sonia is, and here's the key: she's the friend with whom she traveled to Peru. X-rays remembers that she remembers being at the airport in Peru, but she doesn't remember anything else, so the only person who can help her, the only person who can clarify what happened, is her, Sonia. And now that she's gone... X-rays are in a lot of trouble.
X-rays begin with a strong foot, everything happens without the reader having time to react and that means that, when she wants to realize it, perhaps she has already spent more than half a book in front of her eyes, because many things happen in a very short time, and that's a good thing, because it makes the novel fast and its reading agile.
This is also helped by the narrative of his at, Pilar Ana Tolosana Artola, which is fresh and dynamic. She doesn't stop to describe unnecessary scenes and plays with characters that appear throughout the novel. These external characters whose duration in the book will be greater or smaller depending on the moment in which they are used will be the ones that give us the keys to discover the mystery that contains their pages. And I speak in the first person because we, as readers, will be investigating the case at the same time as herself. This is curious because normally this effect is achieved by using the first person so that the reader does not have additional information. But the author has chosen to use a third person, an omnipresent narrator, who tells us everything that is happening. However, this voice does not anticipate events and tells us little by little what is happening, at the same time as discovers it. I liked that point because it could have fallen into the error of advancing information and thus would have lost the mystery and charm of this book, so I see the success of the third person.
As for the characters, as I told you before, there are those who come and go throughout the book. But even if they have a short appearance, they are all important because they are the ones who are going to give the keys for everything to make sense. That's how you get to stand out from the rest. He is a character of whom we know absolutely nothing at first. We don't know what he does, what he likes or what he spends his free time doing. We only know that he's been to Peru and that now his legs are plastered. This makes itself a mystery for the reader, who will have to discover what is hidden in order to understand everything that has happened.
In short, X-rays are a pleasant and entertaining book that you will like if you like mystery books where nothing is what it seems, and that always leaves you wanting more. And I hope you now understand what I meant in the beginning, that I like to read stories because I like to live other lives but also because I know that those lives are not my own.