ellasreadingnook 's review for:

Daphne by Josh Malerman

3.0

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I was very excited for this book as I’ve read a few of Malerman’s other books, but this one - at least for me - wasn’t as good as the others. I was expecting this to be outright horror like his other ones, but it ended up reading more like a ya murder mystery. Yes, there were more than a few disturbing aspects in this book, but I found it to be slow and the murders to be repetitive. Also, I’m not sure if this is just my brain being weird, but the book felt like it was written in a different style than the others of his that I’ve read - it took a bit longer than I would have liked to get to the action whereas, in his other books, the action starts almost immediately. I felt no connection to Kit as the main character whatsoever and didn’t form any emotional attachment to any other characters - murdered or not. Right before the victims are killed, their backstories, aspirations, and small bits of their personality are explained, but I found that I probably would have grown more attached to them if they actually interacted with each other - I feel that this would have grown their characters better as well as Kit’s since we never really see them interact too much even though they’re all friends. I did appreciate the actual message behind the book and how it tackles mental health and the fear of not knowing what you want to do with your life, but I still feel that the overall plot could’ve been executed much better.