Scan barcode
fraise's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.25
Graphic: Ableism, Drug abuse, Sexual content, and Forced institutionalization
Moderate: Death, Gun violence, Mental illness, Rape, Violence, Kidnapping, Murder, Gaslighting, and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Panic attacks/disorders, Suicide, and Car accident
wilybooklover's review
3.0
Graphic: Confinement, Death, Sexual content, Violence, Forced institutionalization, and Murder
Moderate: Drug use, Gun violence, Mental illness, and Rape
Minor: Death of parent
beccaand's review against another edition
- 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
Graphic: Confinement, Death, Sexual content, Violence, Forced institutionalization, and Murder
Moderate: Drug use, Gun violence, Rape, and Gaslighting
Minor: Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, and Death of parent
wolfiegrrrl's review against another edition
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.0
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.
Graphic: Death and Forced institutionalization
Minor: Rape and Sexual assault