A review by screamking
The Elizas by Sara Shepard
1.0
I've read past Sara Shepard books before so I was interested to see what she does with adult fiction, given most of her other novels are teen fiction. I wasn't too intrigued.
The main character, Eliza, is an unreliable narrator with no recollection of most of the past. She's an up and coming author who is figuring out who tried to kill her at the hotel she was staying at. She has a splash of romance along the way, who of course, tries helping her solve the case. Eliza wasn't likable, as the author tried way too hard to make her dark and edgy but I feel as though Shepard doesn't know how to write characters like that. She even compared her to Wednesday Addams throughout the story and, just... no. It wasn't working. And the way that Eliza is described doesn't match with her actions or her dialogue. Desmond, the love interest, was written to be very kooky-- but his character was also unrealistic and I feel like the two of them had zero chemistry whatsoever and that Sara had a hard time writing them as a pair. The other characters in the story weren't realistic, either, so if you like books that you can relate to certain characters in, I'm not sure how many people would relate to the ones in here.
The mystery itself wasn't poor, but it was very very obvious in what happened. Sara tried throwing a few twists in there but they're the kinds of twists that feel forced just to throw the reader off and prove them wrong. When Eliza's "shover" was revealed, it literally made no sense on why this character would do what they did and Sara failed at explaining it thoroughly. The culprit and background is pretty easy to explain, even from the second chapter. I wouldn't say this is a "whodunit" book, because you're pretty much just waiting for the main character herself to figure it out because you know what happened from the start. Perhaps I read too much Sara Shepard books in the past to understand them from the beginning but judging by this one, I don't think I will be picking up any more of hers.
Loved Pretty Little Liars, though
The main character, Eliza, is an unreliable narrator with no recollection of most of the past. She's an up and coming author who is figuring out who tried to kill her at the hotel she was staying at. She has a splash of romance along the way, who of course, tries helping her solve the case. Eliza wasn't likable, as the author tried way too hard to make her dark and edgy but I feel as though Shepard doesn't know how to write characters like that. She even compared her to Wednesday Addams throughout the story and, just... no. It wasn't working. And the way that Eliza is described doesn't match with her actions or her dialogue. Desmond, the love interest, was written to be very kooky-- but his character was also unrealistic and I feel like the two of them had zero chemistry whatsoever and that Sara had a hard time writing them as a pair. The other characters in the story weren't realistic, either, so if you like books that you can relate to certain characters in, I'm not sure how many people would relate to the ones in here.
The mystery itself wasn't poor, but it was very very obvious in what happened. Sara tried throwing a few twists in there but they're the kinds of twists that feel forced just to throw the reader off and prove them wrong. When Eliza's "shover" was revealed, it literally made no sense on why this character would do what they did and Sara failed at explaining it thoroughly. The culprit and background is pretty easy to explain, even from the second chapter. I wouldn't say this is a "whodunit" book, because you're pretty much just waiting for the main character herself to figure it out because you know what happened from the start. Perhaps I read too much Sara Shepard books in the past to understand them from the beginning but judging by this one, I don't think I will be picking up any more of hers.
Loved Pretty Little Liars, though