After reading and loving All the Ugly and Wonderful Things, I knew that Call me Tuesday came highly recommended. Finding it free for Prime members on Kindle, I had no reason not to pick it up.

Call me Tuesday is the story of a young girl’s abuse and her seemingly hopeless struggle to show the world that her happy family is hiding dark secrets. Since she was eight years old, Tuesday has been fighting for small victories: a sip from the sink faucet, a bathroom break, a breath of fresh air. Above all, she wishes desperately to hear her mother call her by her name, Tuesday, a word which she has not heard her speak since the event that sent their relationship spiraling into disaster.

“Everything was fine with Mama and me, as long as I acted like nothing bad had ever happened between us.” 

Tuesday was almost exactly the unsettling story that I wanted it to be, depicting the horrors that can sometimes lurk behind the closed doors and shut shades of what appears to be a happy home.

Leigh Byrne achieves a disturbing narrative with a simplistic and matter-of-fact writing style, so in contrast to the perplexing abuse, the main character relays to the reader. Often, this choice made the narrative even more unsettling, but occasionally, without reprieve, the narration almost had a numbing effect. Sometimes, the story reads more like a testimonial than fiction, depicting horrible situation after a horrible situation that sometimes seemed to lack emotion. This is understandable considering how difficult it may be to write about, considering the true nature. It also mimics the numbness that Tuesday seems to feel, eventually, towards her situation, as a sort of coping mechanism.

My only real critique is the non-chronological order. The majority of the story is, actually, in chronological order, except for a small section at the beginning of the book blatantly foreshadowing the climax. I would have rather these events came naturally, as the story led up to them, and I saw no reason for them to be arranged this way except to draw the reader in. That being said, I think that readers would have been drawn in without it, and as it was, I found myself waiting and wondering when those events would occur. As it turns out, they are actually skimmed over, since they have already been described in the first chapter. For me, this lessened the pivotal moment and weakened the movement of what lead up to it, making a significant moment fall somewhat flat. However, the climax was still successful and the slight non-chronological order did not detract too much from the tension overall.

“Transferring my anger and pain onto paper turns it into something tangible, something that can be shredded or burned, or at the very least, sealed shut in a box.”

I rated Call Me Tuesday 4.5 out of 5 stars. I plan on picking up the sequel Call me Cockroach in the future. It is a hard but important story to read and I would recommend that sensitive readers view the trigger warnings below, but those who are comfortable should pick it up. I would especially suggest the story to fans of All the Ugly and Wonderful Things and similar books.