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A review by doodlebeanz
You Shouldn't Have Come Here: An absolutely gripping thriller from ‘the queen of twists' by Jeneva Rose
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
1.5
This book was... odd. Right at the end, it took quite a turn. The story changed and it felt like there were two different books inside one, if that makes sense. The entire time you're made to feel one way about Calvin and his family/the town, which seems obvious as a reader, but then out of literally no where (and not in the fun sort of way where a twist just slams into you, it was literally out of nowhere. it did not make a lick of sense) Calvin just becomes a different person. AND Grace does as well. There were hints along the way that Calvin was a psychopath who killed Bri Becker, of course, but him suddenly becoming psychotic and trying to drag Grace back inside and all that just felt like lazy writing. There were no indicators early on in the book that Calvin was purposefully messing with Grace's car, or how he bought all the books just for her, or that he installed the lock wrong. In any good thriller, these things would be sprinkled through in a more subtle way... in this book, you'd read about Calvin installing the lock and then 2-3 chapters later, after a day has gone by in the story, Grace notices that it's backwards but then continues to sleep there... like what?! Also, Grace in and of herself was a horribly written character. I sort of figured out that she wasn't all daises and sunshine pretty early on, and how everyone in the town was saying that she didn't fit in and something was off about her, but her sudden change into a psychopath was out of no where as well.
Besides the badly written characters, the plot was pointless in the end.The entire story was about Calvin and his weird little town in Wyoming, how everyone seemed suspicious and kinda creepy and mysterious. Calvin's brother was seemingly a bit crazy and creepy, Grace heard a scream in the middle of the night on her first night, animals acted sporadic and weird, there was another missing girl who looked just like Grace... but none of it mattered in the end. I thought Grace was going to low-key be Bri's sister, out looking for revenge on the man who hurt her but nope. Grace (or should I say Avery) was just a psycho who liked to stay at random airbnb's and kill the host??? like okay, that makes TOTAL sense. There was no connection to the missing girl - in fact, Bri is introduced very early on in the story, Grace FINDS HER NAME IN A GUEST BOOK BUT THEN IT IS MAGICALLY GONE WHEN SHE CONFRONTS CALVIN ABOUT IT BUT THAT IS NEVER EVEN EXPLAINED EITHER, and then when Grace finds Bri out in the backyard caged like an animal, Grace just lets her loose and doesn't even care about her? Like what the fuck was this story? What the fuck was the point? Why did Grace have her hair dyed and blue color contacts in to look EXACTLY LIKE BRI if Bri didn't even matter to her and she had no connection? Literally nothing in this story made sense now looking back.
The writing was odd, as well. Some sentences were just oddly put together, and some of the things that the characters said - especially Calvin - were even odder. Like how he compared a handjob to "the sensation you get after you felt a jerk on your fishing pole (literally)"... and how he compared women to turnips and how Grace was an onion but it wasn't an overly complimentary notion... and when Calvin thinks to himself: "she was everything and she was nothing, which made her the perfect amount of something"... wtf does that even mean? Like, the writing structure was just weird. It felt like it was written by multiple different people - like one person would write one paragraph and it would flow nicely, and someone else wrote another where weird things were said and the structure was off.
This book was quick and fun in the beginning, but I found myself skimming a LOT. I worried that I would've missed something, but honestly, it is just all filler until the last chapter. nothing in this book matters. Just read the first 2 or 3 chapters and then skip to the last one... the whole plot of the book becomes redundant once the 'twist' is revealed. Better yet, just do not waste your time with this book. I have so many god damn questions... off to read other people's reviews I go!
Besides the badly written characters, the plot was pointless in the end.
The writing was odd, as well. Some sentences were just oddly put together, and some of the things that the characters said - especially Calvin - were even odder. Like how he compared a handjob to "the sensation you get after you felt a jerk on your fishing pole (literally)"... and how he compared women to turnips and how Grace was an onion but it wasn't an overly complimentary notion... and when Calvin thinks to himself: "she was everything and she was nothing, which made her the perfect amount of something"... wtf does that even mean? Like, the writing structure was just weird. It felt like it was written by multiple different people - like one person would write one paragraph and it would flow nicely, and someone else wrote another where weird things were said and the structure was off.
This book was quick and fun in the beginning, but I found myself skimming a LOT. I worried that I would've missed something, but honestly, it is just all filler until the last chapter. nothing in this book matters. Just read the first 2 or 3 chapters and then skip to the last one... the whole plot of the book becomes redundant once the 'twist' is revealed. Better yet, just do not waste your time with this book. I have so many god damn questions... off to read other people's reviews I go!