Review by itsnotalakeitsanocean - There Should Have Been Eight

itsnotalakeitsanocean 's review for:

There Should Have Been Eight by Nalini Singh

2.75

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

This was yet another book that with an intriguing premise that felt like it was a first draft that should have had at least another two rounds of editing before being published (granted this one was leagues better than the previous book in question).

My main complaints are that:

The first half of the book feels like it's dragging with the slice of life stuff. Having these elements isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I feel like they could have been streamlined or used to show us the anecdotes that characters kept saying happened to them instead of telling us about them.
Luna slowly going blind had a lot of wasted potential, and it felt like her doing so was forgotten towards the end of the book. Any time it got mentioned, it usually involved Luna going into a dark place, and either Luna turning on a light and suddenly seeing stars and going dizzy or a light going off and her being plunged into darkness which made her go "this is going to be all I see from now on so I'd better stop panicking and get used to it". I was expecting it to get at least a little worse and noticeable enough that other characters would comment on it, but her vision stayed at a constant and she never told anyone.
Disclaimer that I don't live in New Zealand and have never been there so I might be wrong about the weather, but it felt like the so-called snowstorm that snowed everyone in ultimately didn't matter in the end. I think there was a lot of wasted potential in supplies running low, the characters succumbing to claustrophobia and amenities like water and electricity that were hinted at but never fully went into play.
The big twist is somehow both extremely predictable but also feels like certain parts about it come out of nowhere.
I was 163 pages in when I knew that Darcie lied about Bea being dead, but the clues seemed to be leading to one sister killing the other and impersonating her. I suppose the author realised she was being too obvious because although that's one half of the equation, it turns out Grace was the one who murdered Nix and tried to kill Kaea and Darcie for Bea's sake. Although there was some foreshadowing it could have been her, it mainly took the form of Grace being out of focus and Grace giving a multiple page confession-based exposition dump on how and why she did what she did. This could have been more organicaly sprinkled in, once again, by showing us instead of telling us about it.

Otherwise this is a decent thriller with some gothic horror elements, though it does tend to use ableist tropes for shock horror that could have been explored in greater detail outside of

Grace's character

Content Warnings