A review by drraytay
All Good People Here by Ashley Flowers

dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

This book was well written and if I was unfamiliar with the JonBenet Ramsey case I would think it was a unique story. But unfortunately we are all familiar with the JonBenet Ramsey case and the main focus of this book is a murder almost exactly like JonBenet’s. I know Ashley has been accused of plagiarism in the past so I wanted to go in with an open mind but it was clear from the first chapter that there were glaring similarities: charismatic and successful girl goes missing in the middle of the night, same age, same time period, nearly the same cause of death, crime scene compromised from the start, body found within hours, mention of a ransom, national obsession, weird media appearances, mom is painted as jealous and a bad mother, stand-off ish brother, pretty mom and well off dad, mom dies before crime is solved. That is A LOT similar of details, so much so that I was distracted by the ever unfolding similarities for the first 60% of the book. There were a few twists that were surprising but most of them I saw coming from a mile away.

One glaring error that kept bothering me was the timeline of when Billy and Krissy got together vs when the twins were born. Billy and Krissy met the summer of ‘88 but when January died I’m ‘94 she was 6 years old. Later in the book her birthdate was mentioned as April ‘88 which means Billy and Krissy would’ve had to get together in the summer of ‘87. Hopefully this is just an editing error and it will be fixed before the book is released but it was really distracting.
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