bookstashread 's review for:

Those Empty Eyes by Charlie Donlea

3.5

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This book pulled me in from the start with the plot being a teenage girl who survives her parents and young brother being shot to death in the middle of the night by an unknown person. She hides and the shooter escapes. When the police arrive they handle it poorly and assume she was the shooter, putting her through the terrible experience of being arrested and charged for her family’s murder and sent to juvie. Once evidence comes out that proves she couldn’t be the shooter, she sues the police force and bouncing between the trial and the real time occurrings is what makes up the first quarter of this book. This part of the book I really liked! 

After this point, you do a time jump and get introduced to different characters and timelines. It almost feels like a completely different book and I found this part of the story to be really messy and confusing. The plot was supposed to be about the teenage girl trying to find out who really killed her parents, but the story took you in ten different directions to get there. I considered DNFing several times in middle half of the book. It was hard to follow and although things came together by the end, it just didn’t flow together nice enough for me to enjoy the experience. Still want to try another by this author as I’ve heard good things!