Reviews with content warning for Suicide - The Unmaking of June Farrow

It took me far too long to get through this book, and though initially I thought it was me, I can confidently say no, it was the book. I also want to mention that I waited literal months to get off the wait list for this at the library, and that might have impacted my expectations and feelings about what the book delivered.

To be honest, I think this book thought it was more clever than it really was.

I’ll give it that it was evocative, and the mystery semi-intriguing. But it was obvious from the get-go the major “twist,”

because there’s no real reason to mention a murder unless our main character had something to do with it.

One of my main issues was with the logic behind the Farrows’ time travel. What caused it? Why are they the only ones who can do it? How do they know the rules they’re passing on? As far as we know there’s like five generations of Farrow women with the supposed curse. Is that really enough time to discover the rules June’s told? Which matriarch tried to go to a time in which she was already alive? And why is it that June’s the only one who seemed hell-bent on breaking the curse? We met three generations of Farrow women that could reason and talk and want and such, and only one was determined to stop them from going insane because of the dual timelines they experienced at the same time?

And okay, I get it, June caused a temporal loop: she goes back in time, gives instructions to ensure she goes back in time, rinse and repeat. So maybe no one could actually cure the problem until June did the whole “mess with time” thing.

But that was a little too tidy for me. And I don’t know that I fully understood her solution to their problem.

She…tied the strings together?

It was very convoluted. And we spent so long in the beginning, like the first third of the book, setting up the breaking of June’s mind (the “unmaking”) that when we eventually got to the reason why, how to solve it had to be resolved very quickly, and I’m not convinced it was done as well as it could have been.

The other problem I had was with the characters. June was fine, I suppose; she was our POV character, so I suppose we have to know her the best. And her motivations and wants are clear, because she tells us them. What really got me was when she stepped through the door into the other time and we were introduced to Esther and Eamon. I could not comprehend how truly stupid they were acting. Don’t even get me STARTED on Eamon. I understand he went through something upsetting:

his wife left him with no explanation. But once he realized that the person in front of him was not his wife — or at the very least, not the person he married — then

why the fuck was he so aggressive? Like, I get where his anger was coming from, but for half the book it was completely misdirected, and it did not endear him in the slightest. He came off, frankly, as a fucking asshole.

If he knows she doesn’t remember, why the fuck doesn’t he explain? Why does she need to extrapolate that he wants to protect her, why doesn’t he just say so?

He’s demanding and rude to a woman he purports to love but can’t bother explaining anything to when

he KNOWS SHE DOESN’T REMEMBER. And then he acts like SHE’S unreasonable for being confused and scared, and that SHE’S inconveniencing him when she does what anyone confused and scared would do: get away from the angry man who won’t give you answers. “I told you to stay put” like she’s a fucking DOG and not a whole person who needs to understand why she’s doing what he demands she do. And then later on in the book this absolute truck of a dumbass goes “I’ve never known you to take orders.” WHAT? SO WHY DID YOU ORDER HER TO STAY IN THE HOUSE WITH ABSOLUTELY NO OTHER INFORMATION AND EXPECT HER TO LISTEN? YOU BUFFOON. YOU MISCREANT.

The only reason is that it was done for plot purposes,

because the town needed to know June was back, so Caleb could investigate her for their father’s murder.

Which is not a good enough reason to do or not do something, like refuse to tell someone things she absolutely needs to know, and that any reasonable person would tell her!

(Side note: Caleb’s whole existence confused the ever-living fuck out of me. June explicitly states Farrow women have daughters. I don’t know if she said that they ONLY have daughters, but it was implied. So when Caleb is suddenly Susanna’s child too, how come no one does a double take? How come the curse doesn’t affect him too? Am I really meant to believe the curse is woman-specific, like a goddamn menstrual cycle?)

What makes Eamon’s tom-fucking-foolery even worse is that we’re meant to root for him as a love interest! It’s not as if we have another option,

Mason-the-Best-Friend is left behind in 2023, and once June steps through the door we literally never see him again.

Eamon was just so overtly hostile, to a person he KNOWS didn’t do what he’s angry about someone else doing. I don’t see how she could love this man. I don’t see how I was supposed to. The problem with introducing a romance that has technically already taken place is that we, the reader, miss a whole lot of the things that make us want to root for the romance in the first place. We already know Eamon’s in love with June without really seeing why, and we know June knows she was in love with Eamon, also without seeing why. But we can’t feel those feelings on June’s behalf, so him being an aloof dickwad for the majority of the book didn’t make me want them to get together. No, not even though he knew that she took two spoons of sugar in her coffee. Talk about the bar being in hell, he was fucking married to you, June, of-fucking-course he knows you like coffee with sugar, Christ on a bike. Or that he knew you didn’t want children. Wow! A married couple discussing procreation? How novel! You totally must have loved him!

Maybe I’m being overly harsh, but I think the real problem is that I’m told they love each other, without being able to see it for myself, so when June finally decides she does, in fact, love this dick of a man despite not remembering half their history, I simply do not care.

And her decision to stay with him in the past was both predicable and boring. Mostly because I didn’t feel a whole lot of affection for Eamon — because for the entire book he acted, once again, like a massive ass — but also because it didn’t feel like there was anything too concrete keeping her in 2023, by design, aka: for plot purposes.

I repeat, it just feels a little too neat.

WHY WOULD THEY TELL HER NOTHING. I AM STILL ANGRY ABOUT THAT.

THE SHERIFF COMES TO YOUR DOOR WANTING TO QUESTION YOUR WIFE WHO HAS WHAT AMOUNTS TO AMNESIA ABOUT A FUCKING MURDER AND YOU STILL SAY NOTHING. EVEN WHEN SHE ASKS. WHY.

I know it’s for plot purposes but that ISN’T GOOD ENOUGH.

Okay sorry. Back to it. I’ll say that my favorite character was Margaret. We didn’t get to meet her as an old lady, but as a teenager she rocks, and I’m sad we didn’t see more of her. Annie was adorable as well. The town of Jasper was well rounded, and felt realistic. The religious aspect also felt realistic in an infuriating way — Nathaniel made for a convincing villain. Hated that guy unequivocally, but then again, I was meant to. And, again, as I said, the mystery was engaging enough. Once we got the meat of the story, maybe 60 percent of the way in, I flew through it.

The final thing I want to say is that I don’t know who the fuck edited this book but they did an absolute shit job. The typos I saw are the type I expect to see in a fanfic, not a published novel. Someone needs to take a remedial course on when to use commas or periods when indicating a person is speaking. And that is all I have to say about that.

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