This book was not at all what I thought it would be. I was excited to read a book set during the pandemic that wasn't science fiction or dystopian. Even though it wasn't what I expected, the story itself had so much potential, but the execution was not great.
First, the switch between time and points of view felt, for lack of a better word, jerky. I enjoy stories where we get multiple characters points of view, but in this case it did not work. We could have gone with a few less chapters about the "today" events with the crime investigation. And Oliver's point of view could have easily been one chapter, with his view of events summarized. Instead, the chapters were rewritten from Ciara's point of view to Oliver's, so we were just rereading the same chapters.
I feel like if we had found out Ciara's motives earlier in the book it would have helped to move the story along. It felt like we would never get to the point of the story. When we finally learn Ciara's motive, the story seems to jump from an Oliver focus to a Ciara focus. It feels unnatural.
The last 30% of the book was great. It moved quickly. We learned more about the characters then than we did throughout the rest of the book. It was interesting and kept me hooked. However, and I feel like I've said this a lot lately, I cannot give a good rating based solely on the end of the book. It did, however, bump the rating from 3 stars to 3.5 stars.
I am curious to see what others think of this book. Let me know if you have read it! We can discuss.
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