The Anatomy of Desire – L.R. Dorn
100-Word (or Less) Synopsis: What happened on the water? Did Cleo intentionally kill her former lover, Beck, or did Beck attack her first and then drown as the canoe flipped during a struggle? Only Cleo is alive to tell her story – and oh, what a story it is.
Expectation: A mediocre thriller featuring social media influencers.
Reality: A mostly surface-level execution that is strongly aided by the full cast audiobook narration.
Recommended For: Fans of fictionalized “ripped from the headlines” true crime.
Why I Read It: Two people told me it was the best audiobook they had ever heard.
My Take:
If you’ve read enough of my reviews, you know that I don’t particularly care for the mystery/thriller genre. So, when “Anatomy” was making the rounds on #Bookstagram feeds over the summer, I paid little attention.
Then two people told me it was the best audiobook they had ever heard, so my interest was piqued. I still had nominal interest in the story itself — a social media influencer mystery sounds gag inducing — but I can’t pass up a fantastic audiobook.
They weren’t wrong, either.
It is an incredibly well-done audiobook, aided by the fact it is told in podcast structure, with each chapter being a new episode in the trial of Cleo Ray, a #fitfluencer accused of murdering her former girlfriend and fleeing the scene.
Read by a full cast, you become fully immersed in a story that for all intents and purposes felt like an eight-hour, “ripped from the headlines” episode of “Law and Order: SVU.”
Now I love “Law and Order: SVU,” but after 20-years on the air, they’ve told a variation of this story multiple times before, so I was ready to write this one off as a lesser contemporary, until a few reveals in the final chapters — no doubt aided by the narrators playing off one another — made me reassess my initial tepid feelings towards the story.
What worked for me:
The way L.R. Dorn (a pseudonym for Hollywood writers Matt Dorff and Suzanne Dunn), skewered influencer culture. Cleo’s quest for followers and fame was eye-roll inducing and spot-on.
How the trial was presented. Again, I can’t say if the writing was good or if the narration amped up the tension, but the cross-examination of Cleo with the local district attorney was near perfection.
Cleo’s layers and final twist. Yes, I was truly surprised by how the story ended, and that doesn’t always happen with thrillers.
What bothered me — and it was a big bother — is how queer characters were discussed and pitted against traditional family values. Having not read Theodore Dreiser’s “An American Tragedy,” from which “Anatomy” is “reimagined,” I can’t speak to whether the big city versus small town theme is central to the plot. But it felt incredibly dated — both for the thin line of homophobia it towed to the small-minded portrayal of practicing Christians.
Haven’t we moved past these tired stereotypes? I’m not foolish enough to think we have given today’s political climate in the United States, but it certainly created a barrier for this reader.
Still, if you’re remotely interested in the story, this one is firmly audio-only as I think reading a physical copy will make the warts of “Anatomy” hard to gloss over.
Plus, the audiobook cast is stacked with all-stars, including Santino Fontana, Shelby Young, Marin Ireland, JD Jackson, Dan Bittner, Vikas Adam, Gabra Zackman, Fred Berman, Darrell Dennis, Oliver Wyman, Jonathan Davis, Hillary Huber, Lisa Flanagan and Sharahn LaRue.
Rating (story): 4/5 stars
Rating (narration): 5/5 stars
Formats: Audiobook (library loan)
Dates read: October 12 - 15, 2021
Multi-tasking: Good to go. I mostly exercised while listening.
