I stopped reading 20% of the way in. As much as I tried, I just couldn't bring myself to care about the protagonist (Katie). She's had some kind of traumatic past and has relocated to a remote island where she's the only resident and she spends all day painting and avoiding the outside world. One of her favorite pastimes is wondering what's going on over at a neighboring island (Ringrock), which she's sure is the site of some kind of clandestine government facility for experiments or something. Two federal agents show up at her door and it furthers her speculations and conspiracy theories, but those characters weren't well developed or interesting either and when I get one-fifth of the way through a book and literally don't care about any individual I've met in those pages, it's time to set the book down.

From reading other reviews of the book it seems like a teenager named Libby from a different neighboring island shows up at some point and she and Katie must solve the mystery of Ringrock, or run away from it... or something like that. It's unclear, and honestly I didn't really care enough to even keep reading reviews to find out what happened, so this one is going to make itself at home atop my DNF pile and I'm onto a new book. Unfortunately, this seems to be something of a pattern with Dean Koontz books I've read; I get hooked in by an intriguing premise and its mysteries... but the narrative never really materializes.

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Created Mar 14, 2024 at 11:50am • Submit your own review...