The book's biggest problem is that it's boring. Nora is a lackluster protagonist that the reader (or at least this reader) never really had a reason to connect with, which makes her crusade to solve the mystery not all that compelling. Combined with victims that aren't that interesting, and it's a case that the protagonist desperately needs to solve but which the audience is like, "Meh." In these kind of crime/thriller books, it's critical that the reader care about both the crime and the "thrills" being offered up and in this case neither were on offer. It was more a leisurely procedural and seemed geared toward people who would rather geek out on investigative procedure and the details of a crime scene rather than getting invested in characters or a fast-moving plot.

Despite being fewer than 250 pages, this felt like a long read because the author repeatedly crams unnecessary metaphors into his description to pad the word count, and there are repeated interstitials from Kaylee's social media presence which add very little to the forward momentum of the book. The end result is 234 pages which probably could have been 120, but read like 520.

The bottom line for me is that this genre has literally hundreds of thousands of titles in it. All kinds of investigative characters trying to solve crimes. And this just wasn't a very good version of that story. There are better versions out there, and you're better off spending your time seeking out one of those rather than plodding through this one.

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Created Mar 24, 2024 at 11:32pm • Submit your own review...