1.5 stars. This novel was a confusing mess. It doesn't even technically have a climax. It happens off-stage (which is the best way I can convey that) and you as the reader only get the aftermath. The plot had too many inconsistencies and it becomes nonsensical in the end with many plot holes.

Ben Jones, a Jewish Native-American truck driver, is our main character, which makes for a very interesting mix of heritages, but the author does nothing with this because Ben is abandoned and adopted at a young age and therefore only his outward appearance takes on these characteristics. He is inactive as a person unless he literally sees danger in front of him and then he'll proceed to move. He has no ability to think ahead when very obvious dangers are going to happen--he's too busy following his truck schedule to really deviate too far from it. Pregnant Ginny goes missing; he'll look next week. Guy is lost in the desert; he'll help tomorrow. If he really loved Claire, he should have been there when she was meeting up with her Ex. He should have insisted on it, especially when he knows something is going on around him. He was afraid to lead Josh to her in the first place, why does that fear just instantly vanish? She dies but it easily could have been prevented, especially when she knows about this "Chinese princess" who her ex is seeing and whose father is rich and dangerous.

The investigation about the cello was just absurd and the dragging the reader to a police station in order to spell out the plot was even more so. It's as if the author realized everything essential to understanding what was going on was missing and tried to turn it into a nice neat package in two scenes, but technically one. Why did the investigator feel the need to use elaborate ruses on Ben in the first place? The better question still is when the woman sees Walt dancing with Claire why she doesn't go inside and demand where the cello is? They had to know what she looked like in order to look for her, didn't they?

This book started out trying to be very Literary, but as it progressed it just devolved into regular fiction and then tried to make it Literary again by letting Claire die (yes let, this didn't seem like a natural progression because it was so certain to happen that Ben would have had to be unconscious to miss it). He never really shows any worry or any frantic mannerisms when he discovers the SUV, beforehand he's running when he gets there he barely focuses on Claire with doing little more than shout her name. He calmly takes Walt home and then calmly returns to try and find her. Doesn't call for help (yes, I know it would have been awhile, but he doesn't really do much of anything aside from fixing something he caused in the first place). The literature doesn't come back and it is more or less a poor excuse to use an information dump at the beginning to explain a stretch of desert road. It's a desert road without much immersion done by the author we learn it's hot, but there isn't much else when it comes to actually feeling the power of the desert. The only thing it did do was explain mirages, not actually let them happen.

There are many typos in here and probably more that I didn't catch. I've listed the ones I did in my updates.

This book just had one too many ideas that it was hard to focus on anything. The subplots just lengthened out what was really a short story. It probably would have been better had it just focused on the diner and the people close to the owner of the diner.

For a note to authors, don't go with Caravel Books; they don't properly edit their novels.