Book Review: Playground in My Mind by J. B. Tischendorf

I had a very difficult time with this one. I started reading it and went back at least three times to the book description, because for at least 20% of the book, the story being told bears literally NO relation to that description beyond the oblique references to a song title that happens to match the book title. The characters don’t share names, attributes, or plot elements; it is literally a different story. Then that section wraps itself up and another begins. That one does reflect the description, but I got to 50% of the book and still see absolutely zero connection to the first portion of the book. At that point, I gave up…

The writing style is fine. The first story – which I still don’t understand – was horrific (I too have a toddler, and this was particularly horrifying for me as a result) and brutal and well-managed. But it was not a book I would have picked up willingly because of the topic (the death of a young child). There was NO hint that the book would contain such a theme/story from ANY of the descriptive material I saw. There wasn’t even any indication that there might be alternate, ultimately connected, story components. As such, I feel a bit like I got bait-and-switched. The second portion, with Taylor/Michael/Dr. Paulson, feels like the book I was supposed to be reading – but by the time I got there I was (frankly) kind of annoyed and tired of trying to figure out what was going on. That storyline also doesn’t feel all that fresh, honestly – despite mental health/”is it real?” storylines being generally ones that I find very compelling, I found myself skimming this one, irritated by Taylor and unnecessarily confused by Michael’s obliqueness and Dr. Paulson’s slightly off-feeling behavior.

This one just didn’t ring true for me, and I gave up half-way through.

My review copy was provided by NetGalley.