falon
I don't have any negative feelings towards this book, but all of the relationships and topics and goals of the book felt underbaked and not delved into enough. I felt like much of the page time was spent on stuff I didn't care about while leaving the important elements (i.e. a fleshed-out discussion about assault or developing the relationship at the beginning rather than introducing the characters and then saying “we text all the time, we're such good friends”) to be summed up in one conversation.
I am BITTER. At the beginning, I really thought this was gonna be a new favorite. I loved the cult and the descriptions, how it was looking at trauma and religion. I was stoked. But then, it took such a nosedive. We focused on two characters I didn't care about at all the whole time when all I wanted to hear from was David and Angela. We heard so much about Deacon's band that I didn't care about and Beth and Deacon's romance that I also didn't care about. The story also spoiled everything that happened with the cult so all of the flashbacks weren't surprising or scary because I knew what would happen. I also predicted the ending so early on and it's an ending I absolutely hate; it's a “The Deep” by Nick Cutter type of ending that was just so disappointing and terrible. UGHHHH
I have really weird feelings about this book. My main problem was the writing; it was so hard to track and weird to follow along with. For some reason the writing made it so hard for the story to hold my attention. I also had a problem with the way this book was set up. The first half of this felt completely separate from the second half. I would've either liked the story to be just the first half and be a short novella or to have the two storylines tracking alongside each other in some way. Having them divided was just so weird. I don't know, this is such a weird book to explain my feelings on because I really did like the writing sometimes, it could so beautiful, but it would also do this Stephen King-esque thing of rambling about things that weren't pertinent to the story and being super overwritten. I also didn't connect to the characters and I felt like I was supposed to?
I felt pretty disappointed by this one. My main problem with this book was the writing. The writing was so stark and distant that none of the horror hit in any meaningful way. It sort of just felt like “Okay, cool. That happened. Next.” Also, so much of this book was in the summary. The events of the first 60 pages are described, and then so much of the rest of the book is introducing characters and “revealing” things about them I already knew from the back of the book! I don't know, this book just never did anything to particularly strike me, although I didn't hate it and it definitely had some elements I liked. I thought the ending would be a little bit more explosive or mind-blowing, and I did enjoy a lot of it, but more of it just felt like wrapping up characters storylines. I also felt like the preacher and his disabled brother were such a drag on the story, like I truly don't know what the point of keeping them in the book for the whole book was. :((
I adore these ladies but I think I did myself dirty by listening to the audiobook. I'm so used to hearing them banter with each other that I felt disappointed by all of the prewritten jokes and hearing them read essentially a script rather than just fuck around. Obviously, that's not the point of the book, but I think if I had read the book physically I would have been bothered less by that fact. It's just not the type of humor I want from them, but I really loved and related to Georgia's chapters especially. As much as I love Karen, I related to absolutely zero of it, so I felt like I took nothing from them besides learning about her life, which I did love. I just felt so confused after finishing it so three stars lmao
I'm so sad i didn't love this. I really thought this would be a new favorite, but this book did one of my least favorite things. This was a thriller with one of the best twists I think I've read, but it came so early! I'm not sure if I would have even liked it later, because I just hated Carly's chapters so much, I would've been mad about reading them and not knowing why I was reading them. But because the reveal came so early, it made the continuation of her chapters feel so pointless because I knew what the end result of that storyline was going to be. I'm upset.
I'm definitely the minority in this one. Though certainly not a fault of this book, it was very unenjoyable for me because so much of it talked about possible methods of hunting the culprit down, and when I'm reading this that had already happened. Obviously, that's not the book's fault, but by the end I felt like I hadn't taken anything new away. Also, I think I'm the only person who isn't a fan of the writing of this book. I'm not sure if it's because of how it had to be pieced together, but it felt very jumpy and all over the place and I frequently had to reread to figure out how we got to talking about a topic so suddenly. Just not for me.
I wanted to like this one but it didn't work for me. It felt like it was going for an almost Chuck Palahniuk style in the writing and the twists but didn't have the skill to pull it off on a larger scale so instead shortened it. However, the length made it so it was just twist after twist with nothing else making it strong.
I really wanted to like this book, unfortunately absolutely nothing about it worked for me. 3/4 of the plot points were so outlandish I couldn't suspend my disbelief even a little bit, and the ones that weren't were severely underwritten. The main characters were boring at best and unbearable at worst. This book also tried to undertake so many social issues over the span of 300 pages and didn't expand or delve into anything beyond a surface level with any of them. I've bumped this down to a one star because I honestly can't remember anything it did or that I liked about it to give it a two.