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abbyt134's review
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
The golden rule of mystery writing is that before the first sentence goes on the page, the author knows the ending. When I read mysteries, I usually hit a snag about 30% of the way because there is too much world building and the clues or leads do not have any clear payoffs. Rather than watch our MC(s) fumble around so the author can tell me things about the setting or characters, I peek at one of the last few pages to learn who the culprit is or identify another major plot reveal. It allows me to read the rest of the novel in a different light and I enjoy picking up clues knowing where they lead, even if pursuing them doesn’t serve a clear purpose immediately. After reading the third to last page, I was even more curious to find out how we would get there because it felt like we barely knew the culprit. But even after reading the full book, I was dissatisfied because I didn't know them all that much better.
There are too many characters in this book. The cover shows fourteen pens and pencils aligned in a circle, with various descriptors of their users next to them. For how convincingly Jincy Willett discusses Amy’s pursuit of the three dimensional written protagonist, multiple characters fail to fit their assigned label. At multiple points in the book, I would spend a few minutes trying to figure out who was “the smart one” or which character was “the pretty girl”. At the end, I’m still unsure.
Spoiler Below: I don’t give away the identity of the sniper but many of my critiques deal with the climax and the resolution of the plot and how the characters behave in these crucial moments.
Throughout the book, we get peeks into the sniper’s mind in the form of journal entries. It felt like the sniper, after one huge passage about 60% in, was the only character besides Amy who we could attempt to dissect. We learn surface-level motivations of other characters, but it really felt like the sniper could be a hidden personality of any of them. In fact, Amy says that this character had remained so constant throughout the book that they were the most opaque, and therefore most likely to be hiding such violent tendencies. But I can name three other characters (just off the top of my head) who meet that qualification. And then Amy, who had become almost reliably dreary and unmotivated, experiences an epiphany, but not the kind you’d expect. Instead of suddenly making sense of all the clues and realizing who the sniper is, the culprit reveals themself to Amy alone. Suddenly, she becomes a completely different person. It takes Amy a single moment to realize she missed out on a lot of life experiences and decide she’s inspired enough to be both selfish and miraculously empowered. She devolves into someone vindictive and vapid so she can tell the person she has been chasing and attempting to understand for the last three hundred pages that, actually, she does not care. Amy proceeds to criticize this person’s storytelling and call them wholly uninteresting while going off on a rant about the hardships she has experienced in her life. This culminates in a story (with very low shock value because it’s almost entirely irrelevant) that Amy never even finishes telling the sniper. The logistics of the resolution of the confrontation make very little sense.
Everything about the final chapter of this book feels phoned in, which is a far cry from the bulk of the novel. The plot is almost entirely driven by the escalation of the antagonist and most pages are devoted to amy’s thoughts as she endures her current reality. In fact, Amy makes only one effort to really examine her students, which she gives up after 5 minutes, relying, instead, on death to thin the suspect pool. Amy is, for 80% of the book, uncommitted to uncovering the mystery and far from a dynamic lead. I finished this book out of determination and a lack of anything better to do. But it gets 2.5 stars for passing the time and for Willett’s unique ability to make all the characters (except for Chuck Heston) thoroughly unlikeable while telling us almost nothing about them.
There are too many characters in this book. The cover shows fourteen pens and pencils aligned in a circle, with various descriptors of their users next to them. For how convincingly Jincy Willett discusses Amy’s pursuit of the three dimensional written protagonist, multiple characters fail to fit their assigned label. At multiple points in the book, I would spend a few minutes trying to figure out who was “the smart one” or which character was “the pretty girl”. At the end, I’m still unsure.
Spoiler Below: I don’t give away the identity of the sniper but many of my critiques deal with the climax and the resolution of the plot and how the characters behave in these crucial moments.
Everything about the final chapter of this book feels phoned in, which is a far cry from the bulk of the novel. The plot is almost entirely driven by the escalation of the antagonist and most pages are devoted to amy’s thoughts as she endures her current reality. In fact, Amy makes only one effort to really examine her students, which she gives up after 5 minutes, relying, instead, on death to thin the suspect pool. Amy is, for 80% of the book, uncommitted to uncovering the mystery and far from a dynamic lead. I finished this book out of determination and a lack of anything better to do. But it gets 2.5 stars for passing the time and for Willett’s unique ability to make all the characters (except for Chuck Heston) thoroughly unlikeable while telling us almost nothing about them.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Body shaming, Fatphobia, Murder, and Sexism
Minor: Infidelity, Medical content, Sexual assault, Terminal illness, and War
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