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belinda's review
2.0
The book opens with archaeology professor Rebecca Wilding going for a run with her dog Big Boy. Over the course of the next 50 pages, we find out her husband is terrible, her job is terrible and her children are terrible. After reading this litany of horribleness, I felt like I'd just gone out to lunch with someone who'd had a horrible day and who had just complained non-stop throughout the whole thing. It is not fun hanging out with that type of person! So I hopped on to Goodreads to see if the book got less depressing as it went on. The general consensus seemed to be you found Rebecca's first-person narration irritating and the book annoyed you, or you did not find it irritating and you really enjoyed the book. I found Rebecca's first-person narration irritating, so I read the last two chapters to find out what happened and called it a day.
I am giving this book two stars instead of one because I think the story had a lot of potential. With a decent copy editor (e.g., Australian universities do not have tenure and no one professor would supervise 14 PhD candidates; surely no university professor would advise a student not to go to a location because years earlier she knew someone who died there in a freak accident) and a decent structural editor (perhaps change the story to flashback to add suspense; add some comic relief to stop the unrelenting whining; explain why Rebecca actually wants to be with her husband since he's really awful to her) the book could have been really good. Here's hoping the author gets some better help next time.
I am giving this book two stars instead of one because I think the story had a lot of potential. With a decent copy editor (e.g., Australian universities do not have tenure and no one professor would supervise 14 PhD candidates; surely no university professor would advise a student not to go to a location because years earlier she knew someone who died there in a freak accident) and a decent structural editor (perhaps change the story to flashback to add suspense; add some comic relief to stop the unrelenting whining; explain why Rebecca actually wants to be with her husband since he's really awful to her) the book could have been really good. Here's hoping the author gets some better help next time.
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