The Night Shift

It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't very good either. Tbh it was pretty generic. I'm struggling to think of anything exceptional that would catapult it to award-winning status. I'm at a loss.

So, right off the bat, one of the main characters has a random sexual encounter. This small diversion pretty much sums up my feelings for the rest of the book. Not only was it kind of weird to introduce the character with, but it had no impact on anything after nor did it explain the particular character's personality or motives.

From that point on, the plot and characters just sort of spider-web out until eventually converging at the end. However, some of those seem highly unnecessary by the ending. Entire characters and subplots could have been completely erased and had no bearing on the ending.

Around the halfway point, I kind of felt like some strange exquisite corpse writing was going on or something. I can't quite pinpoint it, but something changed. I didn't feel like I was reading the same book I started. I dunno if anyone else felt that way.

As for the ending, I felt like the red herrings and twists were a bit much. It seemed to me that the author was hoping for that to be talked about moreso than the writing. However, I felt like everything was a bit telegraphed and pretty much confirmed for me at one of the twists.

Was this book any good? Yeah, it was ok, I guess. Was it worth any hype? Nah. Should it have been a teleplay for a forgettable Law & Order clone's mid-season episode? Absolutely.