I received this novel as an advanced copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
On the cusp of a pending promotion, Hannah Monroe eagerly rushes home to tell her boyfriend, Matt, the good news – only to discover that he is gone. Every item of his, every call she ever made to him, every text message she ever sent to him, every photo has vanished. It’s as though their last four years together never happened. As Hannah struggles to get through the next few days, she knows that she has to find him. But as soon as she begins to search for him, she realizes that someone else is watching her.
Alright … where do I start with this novel? Let me begin by saying that I did not enjoy this thriller for various different reasons:
- The first half of the story was boring. Hannah keeps crying and calling and making stupid mistakes. She is also fixated on Matt to the point where I felt embarrassed of her and for her. Her work starts to suffer, her friends become impatient with her, and she just can’t seem to do anything but mope around and call the same number over and over again in the hopes that things are going to change.
- Weird things begin to happen to her and she does nothing at all about it. She just assumes it is Matt. Okay, fine, keep that assumption, but why don’t you get some video cameras placed so you can find out if it really is him? Why do you do nothing to find out how someone is getting in and out of your house and spying on you? Her lack of thinking just made me shake my head.
- The twist … it was awkward. What does that mean? It means that it took my by surprise but it was not done well. It was a sloppy twist that came out of nowhere and made no sense. Nothing from the first half of the story was indicative of this twist, and the rest of the story seemed to try to explain the twist …. which was also done unsuccessfully. It could have been done better.
- The random stuff with her parents. I get that the author was trying to explain some of the psychological impact that they may have had on Hannah but it didn’t work because it seemed to have just been thrown in there and not been fully developed.
- The characters sucked. I hated all of them. They were not believable and they were just so unlikeable.
Overall, this novel failed for me on a lot of levels. It had bad character development, a sloppy explanation for the events, sloppy events in general, and a very awkwardly-placed, underdeveloped twist. I read it because I felt I had to but not because I enjoyed it.