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A review by laelyn
Moment in Time by Suzanne Redfearn
1.0
Whew. This was... kind of a mess?
I haven't read any of Redfearn's previous books. I requested this arc purely on the basis of what the blurb told me it was about. I honestly think... this book was just not written for me.
Its characters are, as the author notes herself later on, all characters of previous books. Their past, which I can assume is being told in those books, is being talked about here as well but in a way that made me feel like I was reading a sequel and was supposed to know about all of this already. It actually made me google if this was a sequel. As such, the protagonists come off as rather shallow and underdeveloped, because I assume most of their character development happened in previous books. I didn't care for any of them, which is a bad thing in a book that relies heavily on the emotions it evokes in the reader. BUT, and here is the big but, I do think that readers who enjoyed Redfearn's previous novels and know these characters will enjoy this one, too.
I was also disappointed in how the sexual assault of one of the characters was handled. It all felt so... superficial, almost carelessly put together at times. There was basically no exploration of the survivor's feelings, and not much time was spent on how the other girls, her friends, felt about it either. The book focused more on a romance I didn't care about and a criminal investigation into one of the girls who was about to be charged with attacking the perpetrator of the aforemention assault. The trauma this girl went through felt like a gimmick, the rapist was more focused on than the girl who survived his assault. The twists were not based in the story itself, and one especially made absolutely no sense with what we've been told before, so I honestly was in a constant state of "what does this book actually want to tell me???". It's definitely not a book that deals with the aftermath of sexual assault. I could not tell you what this story is actually about. It's a mess, there's no nuance to anything, everything is superficial and the blurb is entirely misleading.
There's also some really weird messaging at the ending of the book that had some red flags for me. Basically, it mentioned cancel culture in regards to men being accused of sexual assault on social media that read to me like the author actively criticising people for using social media to call out their attackers, because do we even know how many men are wrongly accused and have to suffer the consequences? It feels like the old "evil women coming for innocent men for their own gain" argument that felt out of place in this novel, and any novel about sexual assault actually, and I honestly cannot fathom why this was in here.
The writing is okay, but neither very engaging nor very complex. It's a quick read and the subject matter itself is something worth exploring, but that's really all the positives. As someone who, as I've said, hasn't read any of Redfearn's bibliography, I might just not be the reader this book was aiming for, and hey, that's okay.
I haven't read any of Redfearn's previous books. I requested this arc purely on the basis of what the blurb told me it was about. I honestly think... this book was just not written for me.
Its characters are, as the author notes herself later on, all characters of previous books. Their past, which I can assume is being told in those books, is being talked about here as well but in a way that made me feel like I was reading a sequel and was supposed to know about all of this already. It actually made me google if this was a sequel. As such, the protagonists come off as rather shallow and underdeveloped, because I assume most of their character development happened in previous books. I didn't care for any of them, which is a bad thing in a book that relies heavily on the emotions it evokes in the reader. BUT, and here is the big but, I do think that readers who enjoyed Redfearn's previous novels and know these characters will enjoy this one, too.
I was also disappointed in how the sexual assault of one of the characters was handled. It all felt so... superficial, almost carelessly put together at times. There was basically no exploration of the survivor's feelings, and not much time was spent on how the other girls, her friends, felt about it either. The book focused more on a romance I didn't care about and a criminal investigation into one of the girls who was about to be charged with attacking the perpetrator of the aforemention assault. The trauma this girl went through felt like a gimmick, the rapist was more focused on than the girl who survived his assault. The twists were not based in the story itself, and one especially made absolutely no sense with what we've been told before, so I honestly was in a constant state of "what does this book actually want to tell me???". It's definitely not a book that deals with the aftermath of sexual assault. I could not tell you what this story is actually about. It's a mess, there's no nuance to anything, everything is superficial and the blurb is entirely misleading.
There's also some really weird messaging at the ending of the book that had some red flags for me. Basically, it mentioned cancel culture in regards to men being accused of sexual assault on social media that read to me like the author actively criticising people for using social media to call out their attackers, because do we even know how many men are wrongly accused and have to suffer the consequences? It feels like the old "evil women coming for innocent men for their own gain" argument that felt out of place in this novel, and any novel about sexual assault actually, and I honestly cannot fathom why this was in here.
The writing is okay, but neither very engaging nor very complex. It's a quick read and the subject matter itself is something worth exploring, but that's really all the positives. As someone who, as I've said, hasn't read any of Redfearn's bibliography, I might just not be the reader this book was aiming for, and hey, that's okay.