Another Amazon First Reads, another "do I DNF this or not" debate as I read through it. I'm starting to think that a lot of authors just don't understand what a "psychological thriller" is supposed to be, beyond a general premise that the protagonist is an unreliable narrator, and/or that there's a mental health component to the reason why someone's reality is not what it seems.

The one thing I do admire about it is that the author isn't afraid to go dark. The subject matter deals with a disturbed youth, and it doesn't pull any punches. There are a lot of authors who like the salaciousness of a sensitive issue and will play those elements up in marketing but then beg off really delving into it in the actual book (similar to sex scenes where, outside of romance, there's a real tendency to cut away from the details or making it as generic as possible), so I give the author some credit for not being afraid to really get into the weeds of a difficult issue to write about.

That said, from a strictly literary point of view, the characters weren't very interesting, the story was pretty bland, and there wasn't much of a compelling reason to care about what was happening in this book. I wanted to like it, but there just wasn't enough good stuff there to make it anything other than a slog to read through. Another Amazon First Reads book in the "thumbs down" category.

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Created Jan 18, 2025 at 1:28pm • Submit your own review...