Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsNot What I'd Hoped For
Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2019
I hate to give a book that's not flat out horrible a less than stellar review, but I'm not sure how I feel about this book. I'm still thinking about it a few days after finishing it, and would kind of like to discuss it with a book club or something, but on the other hand, I did not enjoy reading it. I kind of stuck with it out of curiosity, but I knew early on that I was displeased. It did have some wicked, rather unexpected twists in the second half of the story On the other hand, I felt like it had some holes in the plot to make those twists possible. In the end, I feel like it would have been a very good, very interesting novella of about 100 pages, not a 300+ page novel. I realized there would be trouble when I got to Chapter 16 (the chapters are short, but still...) and pretty much all that had happened was that we'd established that everybody thought the head teacher man was sexy and possibly a little dangerous. Reading it kind of felt like I was in on a bunch of small town gossip, not a plot that was hopefully moving forward. (WARNING....Potential spoilers ahead, but I'll be as vague as possible... ) The end was fairly surprising and disturbing, and almost very good. But then, in the final twist, if the item in the envelope got there the way we'd have to deduce it did, how did that happen, considering that the most recently deceased person who put it in the envelope was portrayed to have always been (and clearly still was) only a weak bully who got others to do the dirty work? I cannot reconcile this and feel like I'm missing something? I don't know. Three stars because it had enough of something that I'm still thinking about it, and because of the twists. Overall, though, just not thrilled with the experience of this book.
