My rating: 2 of 5 stars
"A riveting new suspense novel that will keep you guessing until the end."
I just didn't get that. I picked up this book because I wanted to read something good with suspense and action and this was a best seller promising both in the subtitle.
And Then She Was Gone is part of a detective series, which I somehow missed when I picked it up. In this book, the 'detective' is a seventeen-year-old kid. His life is perfect, he has a great reliable best friend, loving parents, amazing role-models, his life plan mapped out, and a cheerleader girlfriend. He has no flaws and everyone likes him. He's a perfect person which makes him unrelatable and hard to even like.
The entire story follows Jack the perfect teenager and his best friend, Chandler, as they investigate a murder. The cops don't want the two kids interfering with an ongoing investigation, but Jack's aunt is adamant that he should find the real killer. She's certain the cops' suspect is innocent. Jack is incredibly brave and puts himself in lots of not quite dangerous or tense situations as he tries to gather clues. For some reason, every person he interviews gladly answers his questions, even though he's a kid and not an actual detective.
From the very beginning, there are only a handful of suspects. The boys bounce around suspecting different ones, but there's no real foreshadowing to the real killer, probably because the actual killer had the flimsiest motivation to commit the crime of all the suspects.
I guess the goal of this novel was to introduce the protagonist on his track to becoming a detective. It would have been interesting to see him discover why he wants to become a cop. Instead, it's a light detective story with no tension or suspense.
In the end, I hate the main character so much, I won't be picking up any other novel in this series.
I really hate giving books a bad review, but I guess you can't love everything.
No comments:
Post a Comment