AW

I love all of Ruth Ware's books but this one took me ~50% before I was hooked.

It's not my favorite but I was confident in my 3 star rating until about halfway through when I realized I kept reaching for the audiobook to continue. I was so eager to figure out who did it, as well as learn the future of Hannah, Will, and the baby. It was a good ride.

Note the audiobook quality is not great. The narrator is good, but half the book sounds like it was recorded in a stadium; it is echoy. 

I loved most of this book but the conflict really drove me crazy.
Why in the world is everything Ellie's fault?! Everyone immediately forgave Andrew for the fake engagement. And Jack was the one who was married the previous Christmas!

I loved this book. Although a lot of the plot was predictable, it was beautiful. My only complaint is that Ella was too young for me to believe she was irreplaceable by the political campaign.

I loved the slow development of Ella and Jamie's relationship. You could feel their love grow. 

The more I think about this book, the less I like it.

The book switches between infantilizing Georgie and empowering her. Georgie is birthday clown, but she runs her own business. 

The book harps on her virginity and how she's Travis's friend's little sister, but Travis constantly calls her “baby girl” as an endearing nickname. 

Her family doesn't trust her in the family business, but they are absurdly overbearing and overprotective. 

The last conflict in the book also feels shoehorned in. The further along I got in this book, the less I liked it. 

I really tried to not be annoyed by the FMC, but I never got the impression that she wanted it to work out. It was infuriating. 

I love Mhairi McFarlane but this one wasn't my favorite. Mad About You seemed to glorify revenge and Scott felt like a quintessentially evil character. The relationship between Harriet and Cal was also instalove even though they didn't get together until the very end.

There was no chemistry between the two main characters. I didn't believe they ever liked each other, let alone felt romantically about each other

This book was super slow and I just couldn't get more than halfway through the book. Very surprising considering his other work.

I found this book very hard to start and get into, but once you get used to the writing style I really started to enjoy it.

I didn't get very far in the book but holy hell this is offensive to everyone. 

I didn't finish this book, but what I did read I found hard to stomach. It actually surprised me how upsetting I found it, because books don't usually affect me like this.

Just to tell anyone considering this book make sure you feel comfortable reading about tragedies and terrorism (in a fiction book).

Grammar and stylistic choices were too hard for me to get past. I need quotation marks.