A review by katharinaamaliae
The Reappearance of Rachel Price by Holly Jackson

adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.75

I've thought Holly Jackson is maybe a little bit overrated since I read agggtm, but since I liked Five Survive slightly more, I wanted to give her one last chance. It wasn't worth it. Holly Jackson once again managed to write an entirely unlikeable and clichee female main character with the personality of a brick wall, whose only character traits were being "mean" which felt entirely forced and wannabe edgy and a fear of abandonment because her mom supposedly left her when she was a child. Groundbreaking. Everytime the main character mentioned "pushing people away because they'd leave her anyway" (approximately every 10 pages) I felt like I was reading 2014 emo tumblr posts. And I don't even want to start with the mmc and love interest. He felt like a recycled version of Ravi from agggtm and since he was popular on booktok Holly Jackson decided to write a knockoff and not even a good one. Everytime she started describing his outfits I wanted to cry. I could honestly only imagine him as a 10 year old child because there's just no way. Giving a character ugly clothes doesn't make them more interesting, sorry. The plottwist was maybe slightly surprising at best
but if I'm being honest, I suspected the dad from the beginning probably because Holly Jackson has a habit of making a character the mc trusts the villian in the end and it's getting old.
The ending might've been the worst part because it was SO unbelievable and unrealistic. One last thing that made me want to throw the book out of the window were the constant pop culture refrences. Again totally forced and millenial like. Who told authors they need to do that to be "relatable" or "modern". You don't, please stop. Everytime I see the word "Tik Tok" in a book it makes me want to scratch my eyes out and set the it on fire. No offense. In retrospect: Save your time, don't read this book.
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