A review by geraldine
The Last One at the Wedding by Jason Rekulak

dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

i had a hundred paragraphs written out and deleted them all because I don't think this book deserved them. his first book got flack for having a conservative bent, which I thought was one possible read but might not have been intentional, but having read this i do now think it was intentional. frank comes across as a loving but flawed father and brother, who is very set in his ways, and then is proved wholly right all along by the end. like???? you told a child with food insecurity to eat a chicken breast out of the dirt????? you get mad that a little girl who was homeless doesn't want to sleep in a room filled with spiders? everything about the way he treated that little girl felt like not what she needed at all, she needed someone like a trained social worker working with an actual foster parent who had experience with children living through food insecurity, not a hapless dad who yells at her and feels smug when she throws up. and then he gets to be her actual dad. really hated this. plus things like, seeing a gay couple kiss at a party as a signifier of debauchery. 

for the record I don't think he's an unrealistic character, he felt very real, but the narrative praising him for being set in his ways felt extremely gross to me. 

i will say however the horror of

finding a nest of daddy longlegs

was actually extremely effective and horrible. good sequence. insane sequence.