A review by lydsansthekidd
Jack by James Crawford

2.0

I feel like this one wasn't as solid as the first book. The plot for this one was really... mushy. I feel like the time skips are a lot at fault here, especially the eight months that Jack is just existing. The other major thing I would blame is how harshly Jack's characterization shifts. I get that Caleo is "dead" for the first part of the book, and that he's grieving. Totally understandable. Then when he finds out that he's alive, that's Jack's main mission. All reasonable. What isn't reasonable is that the same boy who drags Caleo into a burning building to save people has to be so drastically pushed to go save the people from the school. I don't wanna say that he's too passive in his own book, but so much is lost because he's just absent from what I would argue is the true plot of this story.

I feel like the book would have been much more interesting if we saw what was happening to Caleo instead... or even simultaneously? Instead of just skipping eight whole months in which Caleo is off on a murder spree and Jillian is pregnant with the child of the man who raped her, why don't we hear from one of these characters. Either of these points of view would have been more interesting than Jack watching soaps. The development of these two characters when Jack sees them is totally wasted because we get no specifics. Not to mention that after being reunited that both of them die in one way or another. I'm not saying that Crawford has to do all the work for us, but more details would have connected me more to these characters.

I'm going to read the last book just to see how this ends, but I'm honestly not expecting a lot...