One Year Gone

You know what’s fun?  Writing a review for a book that 98% of people so far liked or loved and trying to find the nicest way possible to be in the 2% that don’t.  That’s fun. (Not really.)

Jessica Moore is a bar owner and mom of 17-year-old high school student and aspiring future singer/songwriter, Bronwyn (Wyn), in the small town of Bowden.  When Wyn goes missing one night, it appears she’s run away.  A year goes by with no news, when one day Jessica starts receiving intermittent troubling text messages from Wyn saying she’s in danger and that a cop, who’s name she doesn’t know, is holding her captive, and the threat to her life is increasing. Can the local cops or Feds help find Wyn, especially if one of them is responsible?

The premise was so intriguing! Sadly, the follow-through just fell flat for me.  Maybe I’ve read too many mystery/thrillers lately and I’ve become over-saturated with the tricks and tropes they offer, but I could never engage with this story from the beginning.  

None of the characters, including functional alcoholic Jessica and even Wyn, were very interesting or likeable, so there wasn’t any true sense of menace or urgency in how the story played out.  It also had your stereotypical mean popular high school girls/guys trope, which is so overdone.  

Another big issue for me was editing. The author was overly descriptive where it wasn’t necessary, particularly for some reason where technology was concerned.  Such as:

“My iPhone was dead - it was an older model and the battery life sucked - so I started the car and plugged it in. Soon it powered itself on, The Apple logo flashing on the screen, and then I saw the phone searching for service.”

And:

 

 “I typed out a quick text - Hey, just wanted to check in - and hit the white arrow circled in blue to send it.  I could see the message was trying to send; usually within a second or two it showed as delivered.  Sometimes it took longer, depending on whether I had a good signal.”

That was nearly 100 words to mansplain how a phone works, and none of it added anything to the story.  Editing was definitely in order. 

The ending was the strongest part, but the journey to get there started feeling drawn-out and monotonous, with too many eye-rollingly improbable scenarios.  It held a couple decent, unexpected surprises, but they didn’t have enough punch to make up for the preceding story and still fell into predictable territory for those of us who read a lot of this genre.  Unfortunately, it also employed the standard Scooby Doo confessional trope that I despise. Stop. Please. 

It’s a story that’s gotten mostly 4 and 5 star reviews, so I’m definitely an outlier on this one, and many of you will probably have a far better experience with it.  It just didn’t work for me, but then again I overthink almost everything, so there’s that.

★★ ½  (rounded down to 2)

Thanks to NetGalley, Lake Union Publishing and Avery Bishop for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.  This will be published on August 10, 2021.