mangosugar's reviews
171 reviews

honestly more of a 3/5 but i love alice feeney’s writing so much i physically can’t give her less than 4 stars. my fingers just won’t do it. however… what the hell was this book 😭

this review’s gonna be messy bc i’m in bed and i’m 12% conscious right now (pun intended) but here we go.

pros:

1. excellent writing as usual. alice feeney has always been incredible at creating so much mystery and tension with her words and narration, it floors me every time.

2. super unique and eery premise. the very concept of being stuck in your own body, aware of your surroundings but unable to fully trust your own senses and memories, vulnerable to the people around you, and fearing everyone is a suspect…. gives me chills. i love it.

3. another classic miss feeney unreliable narrator, she’s just so good at writing them and having me question every like i read because, if you haven’t guessed already, sometimes the main character lies.

4. i enjoy the parallel timelines or rather the switching from the present, past, and diary entries quite a lot  

cons:

1. it dragged. like a lot. near the last 80 pages i was just reading diagonally because i had had enough tbh. there’s only so much jerking around a reader can take before they slam the book down and yell “well what the fuck is the truth then AMBER?” 

2. while the premise is incredible and feeney does a pretty good job executing it for the most part, the very slow pace kind of kills it once you reach a certain point. again, pick up the speed, i beg you. 

3. the twist kinda left me ??? because it was a lot of twists all packed into the last 50 pages and i felt like i was watching a table tennis match but i can only hear the ball, not see it. i’m still pretty confused, especially with the open ending. maybe the protagonist lies too much because now i don’t even know what the hell happened 😭

4. besides the two main characters, everyone else is sort of mid, with the exception of an antagonist. like i wasn’t able to connect with anyone else and i think that’s important because if i need to suspect everyone, i should be able to get a good read on who the characters are. however a lot of them come off pretty one-dimensional.

5. i might be repeating myself here but there really was one too many twists and i’m not sure if i’m just misunderstanding it here, but i feel like the godmother twist makes little sense? that’s vague enough to not be a spoiler lmao. if anyone understood it better please explain 😭

all in all, not my favourite alice feeney book, but it did hook me and i was really invested throughout the novel, though i found the pacing way too slow and the explanations behind the plot a bit too convoluted.

the synopsis of this book definitely grabbed me, i think the concept and idea behind this was so inventive. i enjoyed the characters quite a lot; they all had glaring flaws that only made them more human and realistic, if not irritating at times.

alice, our protagonist, is a struggling filmmaker who’s been dreaming about figuring out the mystery of silvertjarn, “the lost village.” she’s got quite a lot of emotional attachment to it, seeing as her grandmother’s entire family disappeared along with the other residents and alice grew up with tales of the town and its descent into evil. 

on her own, alice is not a particularly interesting or captivating character, but what does make her stand out is her dynamics with the other characters and her involvement in the mystery itself. she’s often overly emotional, though it’s understandable, and she’s just a walking “i’m trying the best i can” meme. my favourite thing about her is how honest she is with herself. usually, characters (and people) try to spin their mistakes and flaws around in order to justify them, but alice is really self-aware and i like her sincerity.

the other (arguably more present) protagonist is elsa, alice’s great-grandmother. the story moves between alice’s point of view in the present in certain chapters and elsa’s life sixty years ago, when silvertjarn began its own demise. those were honestly my favourite parts of the book.

unfortunately, the pacing is extremely slow. like i almost stopped reading many times bc i was so bored of the drawn-out tension. the last hundred or some pages fix that though, the action picks up and a very well-done sense of dread and panic sets in, it was very moving.

the plot-twist is pretty obvious, i don’t think it can shock many people, but it was coherent with the rest of the story so i still appreciated it. i was surprised at the very end though when an identity is revealed. it was actually pretty terrifying lmao the author did a great job as i said in creating an atmosphere of just pure frenzy, i finished the book on a crowded bus in the early afternoon and i was still scared shitless.

the secondary characters are alright lmao. with the exception of tonne, alice’s friend with her own connection to the town, i didn’t really care for them. i liked robert but we’re not given much from him, i just ended up with a lil crush 🧍🏽‍♀️

overall it was mildly entertaining though frustrating until the last 100 pages when things finally started happening, so i have it 3.5 stars, but i understand why some reviewers gave it less.

*caution: this book includes an explicit scene of sexual assault*

my only thought after finishing this book is… how unsatisfying. the characters were so unbelievably pretentious, regardless of their background. i don’t know what i really expected from a book about unfaithful, rich white people in england but the author really pumped out the condescension and meaningless ostentation in this one.

it felt like reading a poorly thought out and poorly executed teen drama starring theatre kids. none of the characters were remotely likeable, which isn’t necessary, but they *were* completely unsympathetic, and that’s important if you want me to care at all or be invested in their story.

the pace was mind-numbingly boring. i can’t tell you how many times i almost gave up while reading because it was nothing but unnecessary descriptions and flashy dialogue that meant nothing and lead to nothing.

the “plot twist” was very predictable. if you pay even a little bit of attention to the way the author describes characters, you can tell pretty quickly “who dun it.” the plot twist itself is so convoluted and unrealistic compared to the almost brutal realism of the story that it just ends up being insulting. like, i read all of this, suffered through all of these ridiculous characters and their even rambling, narcissistic interactions… for that? this is the best you could give us?

the main character, rachel, was honestly insufferable. and i’m not talking about her infidelity or bad parenting—ironically, in these aspects, i can actually empathise with her. you can see from the get-go how unhappy she is and how all of her efforts to fix her life without changing it all go to waste, despite her good intentions. what does make her very frustrating is her sheer stupidity and lack of any drive. we’re told over and over again she’s dedicated to her job, but it’s never shown and she only talks about it with disdain. we’re told she loves her daughter and wants to make up for being a negligent mother, but she never really tries and gives up after the first snide comment from her daughter.

the only reason i gave this book two stars instead of none is because i want to support books with the main character being a middle-aged woman. though, to be fair, the only times rachel’s age is mentioned is when she countlessly berates herself for… ageing? she is so disgusted by her own age despite the fact that she’s self-admittedly attractive, fit, healthy and very rich. hell, even other characters and the plot itself hone in on how attractive and fit she is, but her narration is constantly spitting out that she’s 49 with the same revolt as if she were a rotting corpse.

nearly all the other characters in this book are designed to be unlikable and unsympathetic, *except* for rachel, and yet she was still insufferable.

all in all, this book was bland, disappointing and downright insupportable at times. i rarely wish i could go back and not read a book, because even bad books are still somewhat entertaining, but i really do wish i could stop my past self from picking this book out for its pretty cover at the library.