Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen are in a class of authors where I’m instantly interested in whatever new book they’re coming out with. With this book, I was intrigued by the cover and title combination and was interested in where the story was going to go after the synopsis.
Unfortunately this time was more miss than hit. The overall story is that Shay sees a woman kill herself by jumping in front of the subway. She subsequently experiences PTSD and given her currently isolated life, she decides to go to the funeral of the woman and pay her respects. Well, it would have been fine if Shay could be a normal human and just say why the hell she showed up, but no, she had to fabricate an excuse. While at the funeral she meets the Moore sisters. They’re glamorous, kind, welcoming, and Shay is desperate for their affection. But not everything if as good and sincere as it seems and soon Shay’s relationship with the Moore sisters becomes less of a happy beginning and more of a dangerous game.
This was predictable and annoying. Shay is by far one of the most annoying main characters I’ve read in a thriller. I’ve talked before about how I don’t like main characters/ narrators who are overly dumb or naive and Shay just really ticked the latter box. I hear people saying that it’s just from grief and loneliness and I agree, but at some point this girl is going to have to acknowledge what’s going on and be a little suspicious of it. In my opinion, it takes her way too god damn long.
There are multiple POVs in this book and I think it’s about five too many. Having both Shay’s and the Moore sisters, their friends, and the dead woman’s meant that every possible narrative arc except ONE was covered. That doesn’t really leave much for mystery. What it does is mean that your reader can put together the story in about 10 chapters and have more than half the book left and have to decide if it’s worth continuing or not. It’s a fun story, but it’s not an exciting or thrilling one. And given that this is supposed to be a thriller…
Like I said before, I do really enjoy the ideas that this writing duo come up with and so I do plan on reading more from them in the future. I enjoyed their previous books, this one just missed the mark for me.
Just Read It 