A review by kookie9200
Best Friends Forever by Shannon Hollinger
3.0
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to review this book.
While attending a graduation party in the woods with her friends and 12 yr old sister Lily, Kate's world is turned upside down. A grisly murder rocks the group, rendering Lily mute and causing Kate to run away from what she'd seen. Ten years later, after her mother breaks her hip, Kate returns home to face her demons.
This book...what can I say? The story is told in the present time and in flashbacks. I found most of the flashbacks to be unnecessary and they dragged the book down. There wasn't a lot of new information given and I feel they could have been used more judiciously or not at all.
the tone of this book also threw me. It's written as an adult general fiction/thriller but it read like a YA book. No knocks against YA, as it's one of my favorite dramas. It's just that the protagonist of this book is a 28-year-old woman who still acts like a fifteen or sixteen-year-old. It didn't fit the story being told. I constantly forgot that the characters weren't still kids and that the traumatic event that ended her friendship with Emma was ten years before.
My biggest problem other than tone was that I feel the author had too many ideas and used too many tropes to add twists. The ex-boyfriend turned out to be a complete jerk (honestly, saw that coming from the jump). The best friend not being who she seemed. The sister drama. It's mutism. The friends/foes storyline. Everyone is a suspect, it seems, but it falls flat when you realize the author is just painting a weak picture of each person until the big reveal (which wasn't really surprising to me." Also the big twist at the end? Made no sense at all. None.
You have to suspend a lot of disbelief at the outset of this novel to get through it. The cops in this book are jokes, for one. Two,, the number of secrets in this small town that all seem to bubble up to be solved by a traumatized woman doing her own research. It was a lot to digest and none of it quite worked out. It all read false and unbelievable in a bad way to me. There isn't enough substance to make me want to suspend disbelief to go full in on this novel, so for me, I rated it at 2.5. It's just too out there and slapdash.
While attending a graduation party in the woods with her friends and 12 yr old sister Lily, Kate's world is turned upside down. A grisly murder rocks the group, rendering Lily mute and causing Kate to run away from what she'd seen. Ten years later, after her mother breaks her hip, Kate returns home to face her demons.
This book...what can I say? The story is told in the present time and in flashbacks. I found most of the flashbacks to be unnecessary and they dragged the book down. There wasn't a lot of new information given and I feel they could have been used more judiciously or not at all.
the tone of this book also threw me. It's written as an adult general fiction/thriller but it read like a YA book. No knocks against YA, as it's one of my favorite dramas. It's just that the protagonist of this book is a 28-year-old woman who still acts like a fifteen or sixteen-year-old. It didn't fit the story being told. I constantly forgot that the characters weren't still kids and that the traumatic event that ended her friendship with Emma was ten years before.
My biggest problem other than tone was that I feel the author had too many ideas and used too many tropes to add twists. The ex-boyfriend turned out to be a complete jerk (honestly, saw that coming from the jump). The best friend not being who she seemed. The sister drama. It's mutism. The friends/foes storyline. Everyone is a suspect, it seems, but it falls flat when you realize the author is just painting a weak picture of each person until the big reveal (which wasn't really surprising to me." Also the big twist at the end? Made no sense at all. None.
You have to suspend a lot of disbelief at the outset of this novel to get through it. The cops in this book are jokes, for one. Two,, the number of secrets in this small town that all seem to bubble up to be solved by a traumatized woman doing her own research. It was a lot to digest and none of it quite worked out. It all read false and unbelievable in a bad way to me. There isn't enough substance to make me want to suspend disbelief to go full in on this novel, so for me, I rated it at 2.5. It's just too out there and slapdash.