This book is honestly unbearable. I would rather shove bamboo sticks under my fingernails than keep listening to it.
D. L. Fisher really needs to slow down. Instead of publishing three books a year, maybe focus on writing one truly good one. I actually believe she’s capable of it, which is why this is so frustrating.
I tried My Missing Boy as an audiobook and couldn’t even make it past 1 hour and 40 minutes. And I’m someone who almost never quits books. My rule is that once I start something, I finish it—even if it’s terrible. This is my first DNF in at least four years.
The problem isn’t the premise. The problem is the endless, suffocating over-detailing of things that do not matter. I enjoy when authors explore a character’s thoughts and motivations, but Fisher doesn’t explore—she wanders aimlessly into pointless tangents that add nothing to the story.
What’s worse is that if you’ve read her other books, the pattern becomes painfully obvious. I started with The Stepson, which I actually liked. Yes, it was a little redundant and overly explanatory, but it was still entertaining. After three books, though, the formula is impossible to ignore.
The first hour and a half of this book basically goes like this:
• “Look at me, I have the most perfect, gorgeous husband in the world. Also, I’m rich.”
• “I have a massive life-changing secret that no one knows about.”
• “But I can’t talk to my perfect husband about my suspicions because he’ll think I’m crazy.”
• “Also, here’s my unbelievably perfect friend—the kind of woman every man wants. Perfect body, perfect hair, perfect everything.”
If this sounds familiar, it’s because it is. It’s the same dynamic she already used in The Stepson and The Widower, just recycled with slightly different names.
At some point it stops feeling like storytelling and starts feeling like copy-paste writing with decorative adjectives.
If you enjoy extremely repetitive thrillers filled with unnecessary detail, you might like this. But for me it was exhausting, frustrating, and honestly ridiculous.
Congratulations, My Missing Boy: you broke a four-year streak and became my first DNF in ages.
If I have to hear one more time about Susan perfect melons I swear I'm going to scream