Scan barcode
A review by cgreens
The Last to Let Go by Amber Smith
2.0
I was disappointed in this after loving The Way I Used to Be, the author's first novel.
I appreciated that Smith branched out and didn't have an all-white, all-middle class cast of characters.
However, I found this book tedious and the characters hard to connect with. I was interested in the storyline, but . . . nothing moved forward in it. I was looking forward to learning how the trial would turn out and all the inevitable twists and turns, annnnnd then it abruptly stopped as a storyline midway through the book. Nothing seemed resolved or even believable--Jackie out of nowhere, Caroline being super nice and accommodating out of nowhere, Dani appearing all of a sudden and for some reason also liking Brooke, where the hell did Aaron go, nothing more about Callie, nothing more about what actually happened the day of the stabbing, nothing more about Carmen, nothing more about Brooke's truancies, and on and on. It's like the author kept coming up with more and more plot elements and then forgot about them. I'm annoyed that Brooke got such an optimistic ending when Eden from Smith's other novel had such a vague one, as I had so much more buy-in with that character and a desire for her to succeed.
With Brooke, I like her as a character, but everything is just left unresolved and unexplained. I didn't like any of the other characters and didn't feel that I ever got to know them.
I appreciated that Smith branched out and didn't have an all-white, all-middle class cast of characters.
However, I found this book tedious and the characters hard to connect with. I was interested in the storyline, but . . . nothing moved forward in it. I was looking forward to learning how the trial would turn out and all the inevitable twists and turns, annnnnd then it abruptly stopped as a storyline midway through the book. Nothing seemed resolved or even believable--Jackie out of nowhere, Caroline being super nice and accommodating out of nowhere, Dani appearing all of a sudden and for some reason also liking Brooke, where the hell did Aaron go, nothing more about Callie, nothing more about what actually happened the day of the stabbing, nothing more about Carmen, nothing more about Brooke's truancies, and on and on. It's like the author kept coming up with more and more plot elements and then forgot about them. I'm annoyed that Brooke got such an optimistic ending when Eden from Smith's other novel had such a vague one, as I had so much more buy-in with that character and a desire for her to succeed.
With Brooke, I like her as a character, but everything is just left unresolved and unexplained. I didn't like any of the other characters and didn't feel that I ever got to know them.