Half the World Away

First of all, thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I really wanted to like this book. The premise of starting fresh in a new place and succeeding is so promising. However, this book really fell short for me. I don't want to bash it too much, so I will keep this review short. The writing felt amateur, the characters were 2 dimensional, and the plot was predictable. I understand that this is a debut novel, but I just could not get into this book. I had to make myself finish it. I was bored from start to finish.

The dialogue in the book was so flat, and made the characters seem uninteresting and all the same. The most interesting character was Rose, and she was a side character. Abbie and Kyle were so boring. They were like cardboard cutouts. I could tell where the plot was going from the beginning.

The author also said some cringy things, such as “American Indian” and “OCD” as a descriptor for cleanliness instead of as a mental health term. There was a cover up of sexual assault at the beginning of the book that Abbie was complicit in. She knew it was wrong, but really did nothing to stop the cover up from happening.

Overall this book was a let down for me. It was cringy and boring.

TW: sexual assault, abortion