Wow, I could write a novel about this book. I heard such a buzz about it and my library’s hold list took forever because everyone wanted to read it. Then I got my hands on it and had to slog through.

I like braided narratives to an extent, but Wylie’s sections seemed like they were written by someone else entirely. They were terrible! I kept noticing instances of the same word repeated in each sentence, which I would have thought an editor would catch for flow. And just general wordiness, like “she pulled the fur-lined hood attached to the coat over her head and tied it into place.” People know hoods are attached to coats and go over your head. Why not just say that she pulled on the hood? Some ideas were expressed twice closely together, like “There was nothing to do but let it burn.” and a paragraph later, “There was nothing that Wylie could do about the truck now.” Okay, we get it. It read like a student trying to hit a word count for a paper. Teachers would mark tons of repetition from those sections so I was surprised an editor didn’t. Don’t even get me started on how many times Wylie talked to the child about, “I’m not going to hurt you,” “Do you think I’m going to hurt you?” “You can trust me,” “Don’t you trust me?” Sure, she won’t win over the kid immediately but the reader doesn’t need this repetitive dialogue each chapter.

That may seem nitpicky, but I think in a suspense novel, pacing is crucial, and it was incredibly lacking here.

Spoiler

I also think it was obvious from the start that Wylie was Josie because of heavy-handed hints about how well she knew the house, and it also felt obvious that the woman was Becky. I think the twist regarding Jackson and Randy was decent, but due to the braided narrative, it also lost steam and was tough to really make that concept pack a punch.