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karlyo83 's review for:
If Something Happens to Me
by Alex Finlay
My Rating: 2⭐️⭐️ sitting out here on outlier island… very meh for me!!
Ali and Ryan are high school sweethearts out at lovers lane the last night of school. It’s all young love and fun until someone smashes Ryan over the head leaving him for dead and kidnaps Ali only for no one to ever see her again.
There are secrets and lies and five years later is Ryan about to crack the case wide open and who is that going to put in danger.
Alrighty, at the time of writing this review (7 April 2024) this has a Goodreads rating of 4.26 with 763 ratings… quite popular. Those reviews are most positive and people seem to love it… however, for me this was what I can only describe as meh! It started strong and I thought it was going to be for me. I knew it would be a chuck your disbelief out the window kind of story and that was true… but it just didn’t do it for me.
What I did like was the alternating POVs I do love changes in timelines and the parts of the book and the POV changes.. that always is a winner. The short chapters were awesome I loved that and it did go quite quickly. So all of that was positive. It was set up as a winner…
Everything else however just fell flat… I felt like the writing style was very hand holdy (or as Lit With Leigh would say Close Caption) I didn’t feel like there was much in the way of letting the reader work out what was happening through nuance and imagination. Especially the Epilogue which was probably the worst part of this book.
I think the author was trying to make this story exciting and that definitely came through but to do this he put so much into the story that there was TOO MUCH in there… I get why … it was intersecting storyline’s so we could go oooh that twist… which was ok… the twist midway made me raise an eyebrow with interest but it wasn’t that far removed from what was happening so it was quite believable for the story. In terms of the ending twist… I guessed it… which is fine… I didn’t care about that… but it didn’t leave much left to get excited about.
It just got really boring sorry to say… there were all these characters and none of them (except for maybe Poppy and Michael) were that interesting. I wasn’t really rooting for anyone, I didn’t really care what happened to any of them… and really I was kind of glad it was over.
As I said earlier that epilogue … ugh… I didn’t like it. And if we were going to get a wrap up of some chracters why not others… I dunno I just really didn’t care by the end. I have been putting off reading this authors books because I have head they can go a bit wild which I don’t mind sometimes but also have to be in the mood for it. I was ready to roll … and it was just kind of boring.
Overall, I am on outlier island with my review… I suspect most people will love this, most people are already loving this. So if you love this author and are thinking oh how disappointing… ignore me and read it anyway. I think this will be a super popular mainstream popcorn thriller and most people will enjoy it… it just wasn’t really for me.
Thank you to Head of Zeus/Aries, NeGalley and Alex Finlay for my advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
Ali and Ryan are high school sweethearts out at lovers lane the last night of school. It’s all young love and fun until someone smashes Ryan over the head leaving him for dead and kidnaps Ali only for no one to ever see her again.
There are secrets and lies and five years later is Ryan about to crack the case wide open and who is that going to put in danger.
Alrighty, at the time of writing this review (7 April 2024) this has a Goodreads rating of 4.26 with 763 ratings… quite popular. Those reviews are most positive and people seem to love it… however, for me this was what I can only describe as meh! It started strong and I thought it was going to be for me. I knew it would be a chuck your disbelief out the window kind of story and that was true… but it just didn’t do it for me.
What I did like was the alternating POVs I do love changes in timelines and the parts of the book and the POV changes.. that always is a winner. The short chapters were awesome I loved that and it did go quite quickly. So all of that was positive. It was set up as a winner…
Everything else however just fell flat… I felt like the writing style was very hand holdy (or as Lit With Leigh would say Close Caption) I didn’t feel like there was much in the way of letting the reader work out what was happening through nuance and imagination. Especially the Epilogue which was probably the worst part of this book.
I think the author was trying to make this story exciting and that definitely came through but to do this he put so much into the story that there was TOO MUCH in there… I get why … it was intersecting storyline’s so we could go oooh that twist… which was ok… the twist midway made me raise an eyebrow with interest but it wasn’t that far removed from what was happening so it was quite believable for the story. In terms of the ending twist… I guessed it… which is fine… I didn’t care about that… but it didn’t leave much left to get excited about.
It just got really boring sorry to say… there were all these characters and none of them (except for maybe Poppy and Michael) were that interesting. I wasn’t really rooting for anyone, I didn’t really care what happened to any of them… and really I was kind of glad it was over.
As I said earlier that epilogue … ugh… I didn’t like it. And if we were going to get a wrap up of some chracters why not others… I dunno I just really didn’t care by the end. I have been putting off reading this authors books because I have head they can go a bit wild which I don’t mind sometimes but also have to be in the mood for it. I was ready to roll … and it was just kind of boring.
Overall, I am on outlier island with my review… I suspect most people will love this, most people are already loving this. So if you love this author and are thinking oh how disappointing… ignore me and read it anyway. I think this will be a super popular mainstream popcorn thriller and most people will enjoy it… it just wasn’t really for me.
Thank you to Head of Zeus/Aries, NeGalley and Alex Finlay for my advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.