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stucifer_ 's review for:
Such a Quiet Place
by Megan Miranda
(ARC received from goodreads giveaway).
This was. Fine, I guess? In all fairness and hindsight, I should not have entered this giveaway. I am realizing the Straight Suburbia With Secrets thriller subgenre is not appealing or engaging for me, and this novel is very much in that vein. I think someone invested in the tension between financially comfortable people striving for normalcy in cookie cutter neighborhoods when the vulnerability of their safety is exposed would probably enjoy this more than I.
That said, I also found this not very believable at that kind of curtain pull, the whole "beneath the veneer of perfection lies betrayal and lies" thing. Perhaps because the novel starts in media res; the reader never gets the sense of perfection, the calm before the storm, because the peace was disrupted over a year before the events of the novel begin. We don't get a full understanding of the stasis that is disrupted by the initial deaths, and the return of the once convicted (but now not) resident is not the disruptive event it is presented as, because it happens so soon that there is no sense of how things are in the aftermath of the initial disruption. There's no beginning calm established.
I also found the writing to veer into cliche boring displays; rather than letting the actions of the characters and plot make the point, the author has the narrator blatantly repeat her conclusions, making absolutely sure we are following along. I started to feel browbeaten by the idea that "they had good intentions" but "everyone had something to hide" by the time I finished it.
And this might be a nitpick, but if you are going to include a map (which I am very pro, I love maps in books) it really should include all relevant locations. Where is the clearing with the firepit?
Ok, this book isn't a complete loss, I must say. It is kind of a bonkers twisty, turny ride. It reminded me of watching Scandal a bit, in that whatever you think is going to be the big twist happens in like the first third, and then twists just keep coming. And the resolution of the central deaths is genuinely tragic, and the MC realizing what happened is one of the best moments in the book in how emotionally grounded it is.
Ultimately though, it feels like a central core of a good idea, that just got phoned in on the execution.
This was. Fine, I guess? In all fairness and hindsight, I should not have entered this giveaway. I am realizing the Straight Suburbia With Secrets thriller subgenre is not appealing or engaging for me, and this novel is very much in that vein. I think someone invested in the tension between financially comfortable people striving for normalcy in cookie cutter neighborhoods when the vulnerability of their safety is exposed would probably enjoy this more than I.
That said, I also found this not very believable at that kind of curtain pull, the whole "beneath the veneer of perfection lies betrayal and lies" thing. Perhaps because the novel starts in media res; the reader never gets the sense of perfection, the calm before the storm, because the peace was disrupted over a year before the events of the novel begin. We don't get a full understanding of the stasis that is disrupted by the initial deaths, and the return of the once convicted (but now not) resident is not the disruptive event it is presented as, because it happens so soon that there is no sense of how things are in the aftermath of the initial disruption. There's no beginning calm established.
I also found the writing to veer into cliche boring displays; rather than letting the actions of the characters and plot make the point, the author has the narrator blatantly repeat her conclusions, making absolutely sure we are following along. I started to feel browbeaten by the idea that "they had good intentions" but "everyone had something to hide" by the time I finished it.
And this might be a nitpick, but if you are going to include a map (which I am very pro, I love maps in books) it really should include all relevant locations. Where is the clearing with the firepit?
Ok, this book isn't a complete loss, I must say. It is kind of a bonkers twisty, turny ride. It reminded me of watching Scandal a bit, in that whatever you think is going to be the big twist happens in like the first third, and then twists just keep coming. And the resolution of the central deaths is genuinely tragic, and the MC realizing what happened is one of the best moments in the book in how emotionally grounded it is.
Ultimately though, it feels like a central core of a good idea, that just got phoned in on the execution.