The Crash | Freida McFadden (spoilers and ending explained)
New year, new resolutions, and a new Freida McFadden book! Freida’s newest standalone thriller, The Crash, has quite frankly crashed into best seller lists, book clubs, and bookstores everywhere (pun intended!). Let’s discuss!
What’s going on in the prologue?
Call me a hater, but I can’t stand Freida’s (or really any author’s) dramatic opening prologue that hints at major events later in the book. I barely remember what this one is about. I think someone is dead and perhaps one of our main characters is the one that killed him? It doesn’t matter.
What leads up to the titular crash?
The book opens with Tegan who is a 23-year-old woman working at a grocery store to save money for nursing school. She is also eight-months pregnant and unmarried, which seems to greatly offend her neighbor Mrs. Walden.
(Freida loves to throw in a disapproving, judgmental character like Mrs. Walden. They rarely have anything to do in the story besides acting unpleasant, and she never makes a reappearance.)
Tegan bizarrely speaks to her child (and imagines her unborn child speaking to her) and calls it ‘Tuna’. The pregnancy resulted from a one night stand with a wealthy business man. Tegan sees him on the news a few months into her pregnancy she reaches out. He’s married (of course he is married) and doesn’t want anything to do with this child. He is offering her a lot of money to sign an NDA and let him off the hook.
(Tegan is another classic dim, female character. And… Tuna? Be for real, Tegan.)
There is a dorky guy in coke-bottle glasses named Jackson who brings her Chinese food and helps her. The first thing we learn about Jackson is that he lives quite far and drove at least two hours to bring her this food. Who is this guy? Is he interested in Tegan? Because she is clearly interested in him. It turns out he is the person negotiating the contract with the baby’s father, Simon Lamar, so he drives there for work. It does seem he is buttering her up, doesn’t it?
(Everything about Jackson is super suspicious by design. He’s not Tegan’s attorney and it is definitely not part of a contract attorney’s job to spend time and money on the other party.)
The next day, Jackson and Simon arrive to do the deed (and by that, I mean, sign the contract) which it is wild to me that it isn’t done yet. Tuna chatters away about not liking Simon in Tegan’s head (this is such a strange part of the story), but she won’t for long. Tegan gets a whiff of Simon’s scent and suddenly has a flashback, remembering that he drugged her drink (probably, she doesn’t know for sure) and sexually assaulted her. Tegan accuses Simon of assault, and it does not go well. He gets angry. Jackson pleads with her to sign the contract and take the money. Tegan threatens to go to the police. Jackson and Simon leave. Tegan feels betrayed that Jackson didn’t take her side.
(He’s not your attorney, Tegan. Be smart here. You have nothing to prove what happened eight months ago wasn’t consensual. This is sadly the situation many women find themselves in. It sucks. It’s unfair. But given all of that… take the money, girl!)
Tegan is driving to see her brother and it is snowy and dark. Her GPS wants her to leave the expressway to a small, rural back road (during a blizzard!), and inexplicably, she does. (Girl…) Jackson calls but the line keeps breaking up. What is he trying to say? Something about Simon and the police? I’m sure we will find out later.
Anyway, Tegan only has front wheel drive and she slides right into a tree. (Dummies, all of them) Tegan is pinned into her car and has no cell service. Thankfully, her baby seems to be ok. How is she going to get out of this, though? Thankfully a car pulls up and a man gets out and shovels the snow so she can get her car door open. She’s scared of him (I can understand this, but she wasn’t scared of the man in her parking lot at the beginning which was frankly much more sketchy).
Tegan tells the man she is trapped and can’t get her legs free. He has the crazy idea to… push the button that moves her seat back so she can get out. Unfortunately she thinks her ankle may be broken so the man (who we learn is called Hank) carries her to his car.
Where does Hank take Tegan?
Hank takes Tegan to his house because of the blizzard. The roads are not passable. At his house we meet his wife Polly who seems nice (but in a Freida book those are the ones to be suspicious of). Polly is a former nurse and conveniently, they have a makeshift hospital room in their basement. Tegan reluctantly agrees to sleep down there. (To her credit, she doesn’t want to) Oh, and the power is out.
Tegan’s ankle is imay be broken and she begs Polly for something stronger than Tylenol. Polly worries about giving her anything because of the baby. Tegan notices bruises on Polly’s wrist and immediately assumes they are from Hank. Tegan really doesn’t like Hank, despite him doing nothing but rescue her and bring here somewhere warm to stay until the snow passes.
The next morning, the power is back on. Unfortunately, Polly says they are snowed in and can’t get to the hospital. (Of course this is what would happen) They eat sandwiches and play cards. Tegan gets sleepy and eventually decides to take a long nap. I’ll yada yada the events here because nothing really happens.
In classic Freida fashion, this section ends on the most dramatic of notes, with Tegan out of nowhere notes that Polly’s eyes look dark because of the shadows and she thinks, “I’m going to die here.”
(Ok, Tegan. I get it, but this was a bit dramatic. Of course, this is the end of Part 1 and Freida loves to end on a very dramatic note like this even though it is really only for effect.)
What happens after Tegan’s dramatic revelation?
We switch to Part 2! And we are in for a treat because this is Polly’s part and it starts the day before the crash. I was getting sick of Tegan and I bet most readers were so this is a welcome change of pace.
We learn several things about Polly that are somewhat relevant. Polly used to be a nurse but she had to leave after a mental health episode. Aman named Mitch and his daughter Sadie live on the property next to them. Sadie regularly stops by because her father doesn’t bathe, clothe, or feed her. Polly does instead, but this doesn’t go over well with Mitch who thinks she is taking over his parenting. Mitch threatens Polly and grabs her wrist (so the bruises are from Mitch, not Hank) and Hank forces him to leave.
Polly and Hank seem to have a sweet story of meeting and falling in love. Hank is quiet and seems to pick and choose his battles with Polly. We also learn that they tried everything including IVF and Polly can’t get pregnant and she is envious of others who are able to get pregnant.
(Uh oh, Tegan. You are quite visibly pregnant, aren’t you? If Polly will block her own friend for telling her she’s pregnant, what will she do to you?)
Polly goes through Tegan’s purse and finds a flask of whiskey, which sets off a string of events where Polly thinks Tegan is an unfit mother. Unfortunately, we already learned the flask was for Tegan’s brother. He left it there and asked her to bring it. Polly also takes her cell phone and pepper spray out of her purse, because…
Polly wants to keep Tegan in the basement until she gives birth and convince her to let Polly keep the baby (Are you shocked? You shouldn’t be. This was clearly the direction it was headed). Hank is not on board with this plan. Initially Polly convinces him Tegan wants to stay in the basement, but eventually when the police come looking for her, Hank realizes that Polly forced her to stay against her will. He wants to tell but Polly has something to hold over him.
(This was so obnoxious. Polly is obnoxious. She’s not even really villainous but she is judgy and uppity. She reminds me of the neighbor from the beginning of the book, actually.)
What is going on in the basement?
We are now in Part III of the book and this entire part really could have been an email in some ways. The sections are no longer one narrator; Polly and Tegan’s timelines have converged two days after the crash.To summarize this section, Polly becomes increasingly judgmental and manipulative; Tegan incessantly worrying about getting out but also about pleasing Polly; Tegan is terrified of Hank despite him doing nothing but help her. She also continues to have conversations with Tuna (rolling my eyes so hard they get stuck).
Polly has this habit of turning things on Tegan. For instance, Tegan wants to go to the hospital because she’s in pain. Polly says not to because they will give her drugs, and what does she care more about—walking or her baby? (Do you see what I mean by manipulative? Be for real, Polly.) Polly is the worst but this whole sequence also reminds the reader how young and naïve Tegan is. She has a brother but her parents are gone. She is doing this on her own, which is hard. Speaking of her brother, he goes to the house to ask if Polly has seen her. Polly invites him in (strange choice) but doesn’t tell him anything.
Let’s skip ahead. Polly continues to be delusional and manipulative, Hank continues to back down to whatever she has over him, and Tegan is mostly passive although she does stab Polly with a fork at one point. I’m not sure what her plan was since she can’t even get out of bed, let alone get herself up the basement stairs. She also attempts to set the smoke alarm off by burning magazines, but it turns out there is no smoke detector downstairs—something she could have checked. She can’t get herself up the stairs so I’m not sure what her plan was—burn herself alive?
(This is what I mean when I say she isn’t very bright… this was not a well-thought-out plan)
Anyway… Polly isn’t very bright either because she puts Tegan in the wheelchair. While she can’t get herself up the stairs, she was able to get her hands on the syringe and threaten Polly with it. It doesn’t work but it does enough to scare Polly and to push Hank to call the hospital. Unfortunately, Polly threatens to take her own life—something she has tried once before—if Hank takes Tegan to the hospital. (This is crazy manipulative…) The section ends with Polly in the process of smashing Tegan’s kneecap (what?!), when she thinks better of it and stops (whew!)
Does Tegan escape?
Yes! In Part IV now Polly realizes that she has kept a pregnant woman with a shattered ankle in her basement and finally goes to get her antibiotics. While she’s gone, Hank carries Tegan up the stairs and puts her in the car. Tegan freaks out through the whole thing. I can understand, but she didn’t seem to freak out when Polly did things to her. Anyway, Hank drives her to the hospital. Before she gets out, he asks her to not destroy Polly’s life. What she did was wrong but she is a good person (debatable; she does have mental health issues, though, so I will give her a bit of grace there).
Polly is not happy when she arrives home to find Tegan gone. Hank has also taken the medications from the house and scheduled her to see her therapist (we love this). Internally, Polly is plotting a way to get to Tegan before she tells the police what these people did to her. It seems like she will be too late, right? Wrong. Tegan makes the outrageous decision to wait to tell anyone what happened, including the police, her brother, and Jackson (this is seriously so unrealistic; the police left her there and didn’t talk to her?). Tegan also learns from her doctor that someone tampered with her vehicle. (Yikes!) and that contributed to her accident.
(I would argue that driving a front wheel drive car on a rural road in the dark during a blizzard and skidding on the ice is what caused her accident, but what do I know?)
Jackson shows up and apologizes, but Tegan is not buying the apology. And of course we get a description of menacing behavior, which is really just him leaning closer and saying he needs to tell her something. (Freida loves this trope; especially to end a chapter!) Tegan’s brother Dennis comes in, though, and Jackson leaves. Tegan feels uneasy because something felt off—almost like her brother and Jackson already know each other. Hmm…
Meanwhile Polly—disguised as a nurse—charges towards Tegan’s room with scissors in her pocket. Before she can do whatever she was planning to do with those, she sees a man with a syringe (her brother Dennis) about to inject something into Tegan’s IV. She stops him and chases him down the hall. He meets up with a man in the hall (Jackson) who whispers that he “knew it” (he knew her brother did whatever it was).
It was indeed Dennis. Jackson tells Tegan that Simon paid Dennis to cut the brake line in Tegan’s car that night, knowing she was driving to see him (how was he in both places? Was he not going to be home when she arrived?) Dennis and Simon were negotiating a deal to finance a number of ski resorts, but Simon threatened to pull out if Tegan went to the police. Jackson found another woman Simon paid off and she had the same story (what did Jackson think Simon was paying her off for? I suppose an affair). Jackson tried to call her right before the crash, planning to go to the police.
Dennis had been planning to inject a lethal dose of morphine into her IV, but a “nurse” saved Tegan. She quickly realizes it must have been Polly. Hank is outside the hospital when Polly leaves and she tells him she’s ready to move on. When they get home, they see police cars at their neighbor Mitch’s house. Polly runs to check on Sadie. She’s ok. Hank demands to know what happened to Mitch (who is lying dead in the snow) and the police say he fell down drunk and suffocated on the snow.
(At this point I think it’s clear that Hank killed Mitch, but let’s just see where this goes…)
Meanwhile at the hospital, Tegan given her baby a name, so instead of calling her “Tuna” she calls her… Tia. She no longer hears her talking to her in her head (obviously, Tegan). Jackson still comes to visit daily and has arranged a physical therapist and nanny to come daily using child support money he convinced Simon to give her. Polly sends her a teddy bear. Tegan never reported her.
Did anything good happen in the epilogue?
Not really! Let’s talk about it anyway. One year later, Tegan has a townhouse, her brother is in prison, and she is considering dating Jackson. Meanwhile Sadie lives with Hank and Polly and they hope to adopt her. We end with Hank’s perspective. He saw Sadie with a bruised face that evening after driving Tegan to the hospital. He threw Mitch down the stairs and then held his face in the snow. Sadie saw, but she never told on him. He asks her one night if she remembers the night her dad died, and she says, “I don’t know what you mean. You’re my dad, Hank.”
(sigh so hard my lungs collapse; this young child really said that?)
What did I think?
This book wasn’t bad, but it was… (and I’m shocked I am going to say this about a Freida McFadden book…) …boring. And predictable. Two words I would never use to describe any of her other books. I wasn’t very entertaining. It had a strong start, but then everything from the crash onward was repetitive and kind of a drag. About 70% of the book surrounds Tegan being scared of Hank because he is “big” and male, even though he’s done nothing but help her (and rescue her!) and Polly plotting to keep Tegan in the basement until her baby was born. The story lacked tension. I wasn’t scared for Tegan. Early on it was clear Hank was going to make sure she got to the hospital.
I suppose one interesting theme (and related to that) is that our biases can greatly influence how much we trust people, despite signs that point the other way. Tegan absolutely suffers from this. We can forgive her for her own brother, but what about the others? She trusts Polly even though she is the one repeatedly controlling what she has access to. She doesn’t trust Hank even when he goes down to get her, puts her in the car, and drives towards the hospital. She trusts Jackson too much because he is nice to her, without considering that he is Simon’s lawyer. Of course he had to side with his client in that moment. That part does give me a moment of reflection. I’m sure I have blind spots too.
It was just so clear that Hank was going to save Tegan and kill Mitch. Otherwise, Mitch and Sadie served no purpose in the story. I also think that Mitch existed to show an even worse villain than Polly. And she needed to do that because at the end we are expected to be on Polly’s side. Excuse me?? Polly is selfish and crazy. But she is not as bad as Mitch so I suppose we should be happy for her that she got Sadie in the end? This was a stretch. I wonder if other readers left the book on Polly’s side. I didn’t.
Overall, I thought this book was fine. It wasn’t horrible but it wasn’t good. It was by far the most boring of the books I’ve read by her. I don’t mind a slow burn (I even like them!), but that’s not what this was. I think readers who have children or are pregnant might relate more to Tegan than I did.
I am as addicted as the next to reviewing these books, so I will definitely see you at the next one!
