I didn't realize that this was written by the same author of "Her Name Is Knight"   until I DNF'ed this book and started looking at the reviews. As it turns out, my comments in that book were germane for this book as well. The author definitely knows how to come up with an interesting premise for a book, but can't seem to execute on it. I ultimately DNF'ed this book because I found the protagonist so unlikeable; she spends the first hundred pages basically complaining that people in her hometown must not like her because she's black, or because of her history. Considering her history is that her father died, she was a suspect, and she left home without ever explaining herself... I think it's more of the latter, personally.

Other reviewers pointed out that, later in the book, the plotting becomes really dumb (she commits breaking and entering to find "evidence" she can use to prove her theory... which seems like someone hailing from multiple generations of law enforcement officers would know better about), and it's basically a story about an unlikable character traipsing around doing dumb things until it's time to resolve the plot. Some did mention that the mystery was good and the last 50 pages were really exciting, but I'm just not willing to read 340 pages of nonsense just to get to 50 good ones.

There were a couple of reviewers who got really upset about things like capitalizing the word "Black" and getting some of the coastal plain geography of the South Carolina coast wrong for the sake of narrative license... and while I don't necessarily hate this book with the passion those two did, I definitely agree with them that this wasn't a very good book and there were a lot of problems with it... even in the first 91 pages I read.

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Created Jan 18, 2025 at 2:36pm • Submit your own review...