(Rounded down from 2.5)
I am seeing the many great reviews for this debut novel and I am glad people are enjoying it, but it didn’t do it for me.
Starting positive: I enjoyed the main character quite a bit. Due to the structure of the narration, we didn’t spend as much time with her as I would have liked, especially in the back half of the story. But I thought she was interesting, unapologetic, confident, and had a rich set of relationships, some of which were complicated and problematic and others of which were uplifting and empowering for her. So, I liked her quite a bit, and while we didn’t get to spend much time with most of them she had an interesting collection of other children as ancillary characters around her. Additionally, I thought the writing itself was, overall, good. For the most part it didn’t feel forced, the dialogue felt genuine, and it suited the story being told.
Other than that, well, I had some problems. While I liked that the chapters switch POV, giving us the adult/detective perspective along with the child’s, the adult perspective was often dense and dull. And this narrative technique didn’t make the book feel urgent, instead it felt like it dragged on, way longer than it needed to. The pacing really made this difficult. Especially as the killer was pretty clearly indicated at somewhere like 30% - 40% into the story. At first I thought it might be a red herring, but then it just felt like all the “clues” were hitting me and all of the characters over the head again and again, without any other potential culprits. Knowing the killer that early can still make for a tense game of cat and mouse, but that wasn’t the case here, it felt like it just made everything slower, and frustration with the characters get more pronounced. The world building and setting felt really generic. I could place it in any small town in the early 80s, sure, but nothing felt specific or really brought me to that time or space. The adult characters all felt like caricatures. Firstly, the amount of disclosure and child endangerment to a 14-year-old child was appalling, especially but not including he final sequences of the story, even for 40 years ago. Plus, there was what felt like an apotheosis of the police, every one of them always a shining example of doing the right thing, and yet they also seemed wildly inadequate at their jobs in any meaningful way. Often stories with child protagonists have somewhat incompetent adults, that is a familiar trope, but here it felt like we were expected to side with them and be impressed by them, our protagonist was, she never felt she was working against them, and that just made them more frustrating. And while the actual culprit and their motivations were interesting enough, it was laid on really think in the final chapter and the epilogue in a way that felt a little icky. It is hard to really say why without spoilers but what could have been an interesting psychological grey area was just given a heavy-handed black & white solution that basically absolved individuals for things in ways that felt unsatisfying and felt like it was kneecapping the more complicated and messier ending she had created. I think these things piling up are what turned me off, as any one or two of them would have been fine… But mediocre world-building, slow and drawn-out pacing, a mystery that isn’t much of a mystery from very early in the story, poorly developed and unbelievable adult characters, and this attempt at the end to have your cake and eat it too that just neutered the potentially interesting psychological exploration of the culprit… Add all of these together and it just made the whole back half of the book somewhat of a chore, and not very satisfying at that.
The main character is really promising, as are many of the (child) ancillary characters. And while the culprit was very obvious, none of the clues or indicators subtle, the overall idea behind the murders and violence and pathology also had a lot of potential. If the story was a little faster paced, the clues a little more subtle, a few more (believable) red herrings thrown in, and the adults not be cartoonish, and it would have been a really stellar read. So, no, it didn’t work for me, but it feels like there is a lot of potential and it is still impressive as a debut novel. And it was willing to violently murder children, which not everyone is willing to do, so the author definitely gets kudos for being willing to go there. Hopefully her future work will be tighter and hit a little harder for me.
I want to thank the author, the publisher Henry Holt & Company, and NetGalley, who provided a complimentary eARC for review. I am leaving this review voluntarily.