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ashleycolwell 's review for:
Like Mother, Like Daughter
by Kimberly McCreight
I started this to get myself out of a reading slump and accomplish my mission! A common device in any thriller or mystery novel is the callback–when chapters later, a phrase is repeated, or an object is seen again. McCreight does this masterfully, and by the last 50 pages of the book, I was speeding to discover what was going to happen.
However, I'm rating this only three stars for two main reasons.
1. I thought using emails, journal entries, etc., was a bit of a crutch to move the plot along. In lieu of exposition, there was at the end of almost every chapter a mock article, journal entry, or email to give the reader an almost BTS look into the story, but I almost would've preferred exposition or narration to introduce a lot of these plot points. Obviously, that would've led to a much longer book, but maybe that's not a bad thing?
2. It's pretty typical to have a red herring in these types of novels; however, there were like 2 or 3, and it made everything feel pretty confusing. I guess that's sort of the intention, right, except that it felt really distracting and not just misleading. Maybe it's just me, but some of these just didn't feel very fleshed out.
However, I'm rating this only three stars for two main reasons.
1. I thought using emails, journal entries, etc., was a bit of a crutch to move the plot along. In lieu of exposition, there was at the end of almost every chapter a mock article, journal entry, or email to give the reader an almost BTS look into the story, but I almost would've preferred exposition or narration to introduce a lot of these plot points. Obviously, that would've led to a much longer book, but maybe that's not a bad thing?
2. It's pretty typical to have a red herring in these types of novels; however, there were like 2 or 3, and it made everything feel pretty confusing. I guess that's sort of the intention, right, except that it felt really distracting and not just misleading. Maybe it's just me, but some of these just didn't feel very fleshed out.