Review by frankiepreads - Don't Believe It

frankiepreads 's review for:

Don't Believe It by Charlie Donlea

4.0

adventurous dark mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

I flew through this book and loved it until the last 10 pages. I’ll save the spoilers for below. I think it’s the best mystery I’ve read that has come out since 2016. It’s fast-paced, exciting, and everyone has a secret. Characters are morally ambiguous but with clear motives and reasoning! I think a lot of contemporary novels like to have morally ambiguous characters just for the sake of it, rather than showing a fully fleshed out person, and luckily that was not my experience with this book.

Given how much I loved this book until the end, the end was surprisingly disappointing and, in my opinion, not well thought out at all. I hate killing off the protagonist before the final scene or some sort of big showdown, especially when it’s a female, LGBT, or person of color protagonist because that’s just so cliche and sometimes objectifying. Sidney doesn’t even put up a fight! It’s just demoralizing. Even putting that aside, there is simply no way they wouldn’t have figured out that Marshall killed Sidney given that: A) Derrick knew Sidney was going to speak to Marshall alone. B) Ellie had a rock hard alibi given that she was at work with many other people. C) Gus knew that the culprit wore a men’s size 13 orthotic shoe. No one else wore a men’s size 13 orthotic shoe! I could go on.

Even trying hard to suspend my disbelief, there is simply no way. Why would neither Gus nor Derrick say anything about this in the course of the year long investigation?? I feel the author just wanted to leave the ending unresolved in the world of the story but answered for the reader and cut corners to make that happen. It does not work.

Content Warnings