heamarhar's reviews
102 reviews

This book was a good read and I'm glad I picked it up. There were a lot of mysteries woven into the storyline spanning different years and I liked how the author left little breadcrumbs in the alternating viewpoints to help readers piece it together with every chapter. I was pleasantly surprised that the answer to the modern mystery was not what I had expected at all! The ending was overall satisfying and ended at the right time.



However, I have complaints:
-There is a chapter with really cringe "edgy teen talk" that I don't think the author did well at all. Not a huge fan of Flo's "I'm not like other girls" internal monologue.
-I get really confused when there are more than 5 characters in a book, and I get especially confused when the characters are different church clergy members whose roles I don't understand. (But they're all integral to the plot and history of the setting, so I'll let it slide this time.)



And a huge spoiler complaint:
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-This is at least the second, maybe third "the main character is a referenced past character who got enveloped in a town mystery / crime and they changed their name and came back years later to solve everything and no one knows it's them" book I've read this year. As a reader, it's really frustrating for a character's inner thoughts to not align with the facts when we experience them pretending to hear brand new information. Jack thinking that a picture of a "mysterious" "unknown" man gives her the creeps and she can't pinpoint why doesn't make any sense when later it's revealed that she was abused by him as a child. That made me think the author got to the end before deciding to make Jack the assumed identity of Merry. Felt like an enormous afterthought. This might be my biggest pet peeve with books that take on the "double identity" trope.

I LOVED this book. It is a beautiful, original, and thought-provoking look at the justice system, our fascination with killers, and our tendency to leave the memory of victims behind amidst the search for answers. A desperately sad story about how we are all connected in happiness and tragedy and beyond.

I have a parasocial best-friendship with Ruth Ware. Her books are so out there but so entertaining. I love a good mystery and this delivered - and in such a fun way! I went in blind and really enjoyed that it was told via a (quite long) letter.

I keep trying to love Riley Sager books. I really do. And they are always really great minus the dead-end storylines and wild goose chases and red herrings. His books just seem to me like a grouping of ideas that never fully came to fruition that he piled up and declared, "Sure, I'll throw all of this into a very simple mystery and muck it up a bit!" It ends up making me feel like I've wasted some of my time, kind of like when you find out an intense scene in a movie was just a dream sequence.

In any case, I'm off to read another one of his books immediately. Bye!

My previous review encompassing all Riley Sager works still stands, but this book is noticeably superior to the last one. The supernatural (~or not~) element was spooky and even had me looking over my shoulder once or twice. The characters were pleasant and they had believable motivations for their actions. Yes, it was predictable, but that just motivated me to finish the book to see if I was correct (and I couldn't put it down and finished it in 5 hours, so... pretty nice work there).

No, these aren't the most well-written books I'll ever read. They are absurd and over-the-top and FUN, and not everything needs to be deep and realistic and profound all the time, damn it! And I feel the same about books by my ladies Ruth Ware and Lisa Jewell!

While I love seeing the fast-paced unraveling of a mystery, I don't think I've ever hated a set of characters more. One of the better RS books though!

This was a book club book that my friend put in as one of her 3 picks. I knew it was popular with the CoHo crowd so I absolutely refused to read it until now. Honestly, I was kind of dreading it. But I had no clue what it was about when I started reading. Even though it was a little cheesy at times, it really tugged on my heart strings. It was a quick read with a lot of drama and emotional highs and lows. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes hearing some juicy gossip every once in a while.




~mini spoiler below~
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Also, I'm a sucker for bisexual representation in my media. We won this round, guys!!!

2.5

I. Could. Not. Stand. this bunch of characters (except maybe Fatima?). They are horrible people! I know that is the point because it's all about how they are liars in past and present, but even as adults they are just reprehensible. And the story moved like molasses. I wanted the main character to just get on with it, and when the "big lie" was finally revealed... I was SO let down! I expected a much more interesting story than this delivered. The whole time I was thinking of 1000 ways they could have handled the big lie better. I thought the rest of it, post-big-lie drama, was predictable and cobbled together. No way a group of friends that close-knit didn't put two and two together.


I found the setting difficult to picture, but to be fair, I just now looked up what the hell a salt marsh is and what a mill at one would look like, which I definitely should have done when I started the book.


And finally, don't get me started on books that rely on women having babies to finally gain empathy after a lifetime of being awful to people. LMAO. My least favorite trope ever. I think this year, I'm going to try and keep away from books that involve pregnancy or motherhood, because they are all the same in the end, and all I get out of them is disappointment.