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

adventurous mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Interesting premise but way WAY longer than it needed to be. 

Took a minute to draw my attention in 

Belle is an interesting MC. She’s very prickly and locked in on what her perspective is. She’s not super willing to accept help or friendship from others due to an extreme fear of abandonment. 

The dad Charlie was sus from the beginning. I don’t trust him. Or the mom. The way he acts before and after the reappearance is suspicious but the mom’s story doesn’t make sense either. The author does a good job at making you doubt everyone’s intentions and explanations 

I did find the pacing a little slow moving for the subject matter 

Having a stranger reappear in your life and start living in your house, being your mother despite you not knowing them at all? Has to be so strange a feeling. But at the same time, some of Belle’s reactions to her mother’s situation seem very stange. 

I always get frustrated at characters when they don’t vocalize their protests. I get that people are different and not everyone finds it easy to vocalize their issues but it drives me nuts. JUST SAY SOMETHING!!!

I found it so weird how none of the adults clocked how strange Rachel was acting. Her just showing up everywhere and having no concern for the press or the police is so strange. It should’ve put some of the adults backs up not just her teenage daughter.

The author does a great job of making you trust no one. But she also does a good job at highlighting how Belle had some pretty wild logic jumps obviously fueled by emotion. Belle kept going to people for answers and then not asking the question she originally wanted to ask and leaving without the answer. It was frustrating 

I didn’t like Carter and I couldn’t exactly pinpoint what it was. 

Also Charlie seemed like such a shit dad. He’s supposed to have been such a great Dad to Belle but we don’t see that as readers in the text, we are just told it. So when he starts acting pretty crappy, we don’t have anything to concretely counteract that evidence in the text. This is explained more as the plot went on but it didn’t make sense at first. 

I kept waiting for Belle to just explode everyone. She kept so much buried inside. When she finally did, I felt it was a little underwhelming. 

I found the plot was very good at keeping you guessing. I was never sure where the story was going to go.

It was a weird dilemma because I never really wanted to listen to it, but whenever I did, I would get sucked in

The explanation is an interesting twist. I did find Belle’s dilemma at the climax kind of stupid. The decision was so obvious especially with all she’d learned and uncovered but the author drew it out FOREVER. 

The climactic action sequence was a surprise. I wasn’t expecting it. It took a long time to wrap up afterwards though 

The end had one of my LEAST favourite incidents in fiction so I dropped my rating down a half point. 

It also took FOREVER to end. A lot could have been trimmed