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wilybooklover's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement, Sexual content, Violence, Death, Forced institutionalization, and Murder
Moderate: Rape, Drug use, Gun violence, and Mental illness
Minor: Death of parent
beccaand's review
dark
emotional
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Sexual content, Death, and Murder
Moderate: Rape, Drug use, Gun violence, and Gaslighting
Minor: Death of parent, Suicidal thoughts, and Sexual assault
tostita's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Forced institutionalization and Murder
Moderate: Gaslighting, Gun violence, and Rape
Minor: Suicidal thoughts
wolfiegrrrl's review against another edition
mysterious
fast-paced
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.0
This is an alright book for someone who wants to suspend their disbelief for a while and go where the story takes them. If you're looking for a bit of a mystery where everyone and everything is connected (even if it doesn't seem possible), this may be the book for you. The interpersonal relationships between the characters were a bit flat for my taste and the main romance felt shoehorned in, but the real focus is the mystery they solve along the way.
Unfortunately, I had trouble staying with it for extended periods because the choppy writing kept disrupting the flow and pulling me out of the story. I would have loved to see some more variety in sentence structure and length, but instead the entire book is written in mostly short and repetitive sentences. At first, I thought it might have been a stylistic choice to represent the panic the main character was feeling, but there was no change in style when a different narrator took over and all of the dialogue was written the same way regardless of who was talking.
Overall, this book read more like an early draft of the story. It felt like each chapter had been written as a standalone for serial publication because of how often the characters would remind us of something we had just read in a previous chapter, and a lot of sentences were copy-pasted into multiple chapters as though we might have forgotten that we had read them only a few pages (or sometimes just a paragraph) before. There was also a lot of "telling" rather than "showing", though I eventually reconciled that fact in my head when I realized that this is still technically a mystery and quite a bit of the characters' "tell, don't show" approach to the dialogue reflected how a standard crime procedural tends to pick apart everything that happens and have the investigating characters explain it to the audience.
Unfortunately, I had trouble staying with it for extended periods because the choppy writing kept disrupting the flow and pulling me out of the story. I would have loved to see some more variety in sentence structure and length, but instead the entire book is written in mostly short and repetitive sentences. At first, I thought it might have been a stylistic choice to represent the panic the main character was feeling, but there was no change in style when a different narrator took over and all of the dialogue was written the same way regardless of who was talking.
Overall, this book read more like an early draft of the story. It felt like each chapter had been written as a standalone for serial publication because of how often the characters would remind us of something we had just read in a previous chapter, and a lot of sentences were copy-pasted into multiple chapters as though we might have forgotten that we had read them only a few pages (or sometimes just a paragraph) before. There was also a lot of "telling" rather than "showing", though I eventually reconciled that fact in my head when I realized that this is still technically a mystery and quite a bit of the characters' "tell, don't show" approach to the dialogue reflected how a standard crime procedural tends to pick apart everything that happens and have the investigating characters explain it to the audience.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Forced institutionalization and Death
Minor: Rape and Sexual assault
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