Another Cannonball favorite finally made its way up my TBR list, and I had mixed feelings. I honestly don’t know why any reviews anywhere ever would call this book fast-paced, because the pace was absolutely killing me for the first half. Nothing happened but cryptic allusions to secrets and Rachel’s alcoholism and depression. I hated it for a while. Every time I put it down I’d feel kind of sad and crappy about life for a few hours before I finally realized that Rachel’s miserable inner life was rubbing off on me. Ugh.
The story finally picked up entirely too late, and I ended up with some degree of fondness for Megan and Rachel (Anna can take a long walk off a short pier). This isn’t much of a spoiler because none of these women are exactly heroes by the end of the book, just some of their pasts and personalities eventually grew on me and some didn’t.
The twist was pretty good, and I couldn’t put it down for the final third. That’s when I usually give out five stars, for any book I’m so engrossed in I can’t get anything done, but this book just simply does not deserve five stars. The first half deserved two. The climax would’ve been great, but the Villain Monologue is a personal pet peeve of mine. I can’t imagine there’s any good reason to walk someone through every step of your crime and confess to all aspects of it and even provide exposition on your damn feelings during and after the crime – I understand the purpose from a storytelling perspective but it drives me up the wall and takes me out of the story. This one had a doozy of a Villain Monologue, so… 3.5 stars. I’ll round up because I did thoroughly enjoy part of it.
My goodness yes, the pacing of this one suffered so! Its a book that has stayed with me, unlike so many other books I’ve read, and I feel Hawkins did really important work with the types of characters she wrote, but it was certainly not a perfect book.