Scan barcode
A review by blchandler9000
The Next Time You See Me by Holly Goddard Jones
2.0
13-year-old Emily finds a dead woman's body during one of her daydream-filled walks after school. Eventually, the stories surrounding that dead woman—the people who knew her, last saw her, miss her, and try to find her—fill the next 300-some pages.
I had high hopes for this book since I so enjoyed Jones' short story collection, but it ultimately disappointed me. The writing is competent. Every character has a struggle, and you root for most of them to find what they want. Scents are given a lot of attention, from the stench of the rotting corpse to litanies of perfume and cologne odors. But, while Jones' short fiction felt saturated, rich, and real, this did not. Characters acted in ways that seemed to be for the sake of pushing the plot, not naturally. I missed the deep, deep feelings and the sense of discovery (both in the characters and me, the reader) she so carefully crafted in her short work, keeping things internal, with singular points of view. Here, she plays in the minds of numerous characters, and it fell flat and apart for me. There was little place for my imagination. Ironically, one of her short stories dealt with a woman having to come to terms with finally being told the truth of an event she'd imagined for years. The truth was not what she'd thought, and she struggled with the fact that the one thing she'd been clinging to, a dreamed justice, was a lie. Knowing too much broke her heart. I kind of felt the same here.
I had high hopes for this book since I so enjoyed Jones' short story collection, but it ultimately disappointed me. The writing is competent. Every character has a struggle, and you root for most of them to find what they want. Scents are given a lot of attention, from the stench of the rotting corpse to litanies of perfume and cologne odors. But, while Jones' short fiction felt saturated, rich, and real, this did not. Characters acted in ways that seemed to be for the sake of pushing the plot, not naturally. I missed the deep, deep feelings and the sense of discovery (both in the characters and me, the reader) she so carefully crafted in her short work, keeping things internal, with singular points of view. Here, she plays in the minds of numerous characters, and it fell flat and apart for me. There was little place for my imagination. Ironically, one of her short stories dealt with a woman having to come to terms with finally being told the truth of an event she'd imagined for years. The truth was not what she'd thought, and she struggled with the fact that the one thing she'd been clinging to, a dreamed justice, was a lie. Knowing too much broke her heart. I kind of felt the same here.