A review by 2357aya
Hidden Pictures by Jason Rekulak

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

1.0

I'll try to write a review without spoilers, so here are the facts. The actual mystery is okay. It's passable even though some events simply do not make sense. I don't have much to say about the plot, really. The drawings were a fun addition. The characters themselves were pretty one dimensional, but they way they interacted with each other felt almost realistic. There was one part though,
where every time they were in an argument they'd just randomly stop and go back to being normal and it was never awkward again
- that felt pretty unrealistic and got repetitive fast. What made me drag this rating down to 2.25 stars, though, was the writing. The constant references to modern day things done so incredibly bluntly in a way that shouts "I'm out of touch" just threw me. The politics / morals of this story are heavy-handed - but they make the twists so funny... speaking of, I guesses all the twists. It's not because I was going super-detective, it was because the main character was written like an idiot (but at least there were no hidden twists that were never set up -  if anything, there were too many red herrings). It also doesn't help that the book felt really clichéd (and the characters were really modern tropes as well). Actually, this was a theme in the writing, all the characters, at certain points, behaved really uncharacteristically. The MC read less like a recovering addict and more like a UPenn track star. Mallory has this weird ability to detect the male gaze and I think I have a similar ability to detect male authors because no sane woman acts the way Mallory does. This book feels like it was the author's first book (and for his sake, I hope it was). This book felt like a modern chick-flick romance that accidentally stumbled across a mystery - but really gradually. For such a quick read the events felt really slow-paced.

ALSO:
If the mom could possess her child at any time, why didn't she kill Caroline way earlier? It doesn't make sense
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