I finished this book last night and since none of my friends have read it yet, I decided to post here because I have THOUGHTS.
I already browsed a few other posts on this subreddit and pretty much everyone has the same line of thinking. I kept seeing this on TikTok and finally added it to my July TBR and I don’t know when I’ll learn that BookTok books are almost never good.
The writing is just SO BAD. All the characters are terribly written and the twist comes out of no where and makes zero sense. But what really gets me is that it seems the author did ZERO research. I actually live in Prince William County where the murder takes place and the details are SO WRONG. When Adam (MMC) talks about how he first met his mistress Kelly, he walked ten minutes from their lake house on Lake Manassas to a small town shopping center. The closest shopping center to Lake Manassas is most definitely not a 10 minute walk and is huge with a Wegmans and several other big box stores. Also, most of the houses that surround Lake Manassas are not secluded and resemble a regular suburban neighborhood with a lake in the background. And 95% are massive homes, not small little cabins like how she describes their lake house.
Plus, the way they describe the PWC police department as a podunk, backwoods station when in reality, someone accused of a murder like this would be held at the courthouse in Manassas which is a HUGE municipal building. She makes it sound like PWC is this tiny little quaint place when its one of the biggest and most populated suburbs outside of DC. Also, when Adam is first arrested and Sarah leaves DC at like 2 pm to drive to PWC, she gets there in an hour. In Northern Virginia traffic?? From DC?? At the start of evening rush hour??? Absolutely not, especially since she would have taken 66 and that highway has been under constant construction for as long as I have been alive.
Add in all of the “investigation” parts that makes zero sense. No one is getting autopsy, DNA, and toxicology reports less than 24 hours. Small town or not. Those take WEEKS to get back. And the whole Kelly being 4 weeks pregnant and they know its Adam’s baby based on DNA???? Does a 4 week old embryo even have its own DNA at that point? And at 4 weeks she probably didn’t even know she was pregnant, much less the person who killed her so that makes the “double homicide” charge highly unlikely.
After I finished reading this, I googled the author to see if she was even from this area and she was born in Wisconsin and lives in Chicago so its obvious she picked DC and just looked for surrounding areas that would be close enough and just went with it via Google Maps or something. Like any high powered attorney (who is a PARTNER) in DC would buy a second home in MANASSAS of all places. I could see maybe Lake Anna a bit further south or even further away like Smith Mountain Lake, but for sure not Manassas. Its not a little lake side retreat or small town.
Anyway, I just had to get it out because all of the glaring inaccuracies was bugging me the whole time I was reading. Also, the MIL character was the most ridiculous caricature of a MIL from hell. The whole “cubbie-bear” thing was so DUMB. This is probably the 2nd worst book I read so far this year, maybe ever (Haunting Adeline holds the top spot).
by Jlb381988
16 Comments
I haven’t read the book, but your bit on DC/NoVa traffic had me chuckling. So true! It would have taken me right out of the book.
Sometimes I wonder why certain authors feel the need to put such a fine point on certain details like that. Maybe they think it gives the story more depth or credibility? But then they inevitably get something wrong and it ruins it.
It sounds like this book had some major inconsistencies and inaccuracies, its a shame when that happens especially when youre looking forward to a good read!
I gave this book a 2/5 on Goodreads, so it was just barely passable. I don’t remember much, except not liking it or the hype.
It makes me so angry that the author chose to write this in first person giving us her direct thoughts as she tries to figure out who did it and wonders if her husband could be a killer, and then wrote that twist.
Unreliable narrators are great but you have to have some skill to pull it off. She does not.
She is, apparently, a hell of a marketer, however.
This book was so awful. The twist was just so bizarre and poorly done
I just read her newest book You Shouldn’t Have Come Here (lol that title) and it was truly idiotic. The writing was really, really awful. The descriptions of sex were hilarious (she tasted like a strawberry!?). I would have sworn a man wrote this book. The twist I saw coming right from the start. Had a few weird loose ends that were never tied up. Never again with this lady.
I just finished this book and came here to see why this book had such high reviews on Amazon. I’m so mad. About everything, it was so poorly written, and one more question (among every other ridiculous thing) how did she know he would be found guilty?
am i the only one who liked the book? yall are being so unrealistic talking about “no autopsy, it takes weeks for dna and toxicology this is a book im not waiting “as a reader” for weeks on a report it would unnecessarily drag out the plot and make the book overly long. the book was very good the whole mystery man thing i agree was weird especially bc it was nvr talked abt again we can jst assume it was bob since they were partners from the beginning. i honestly loved the book it makes so much sense why sarah was grilling adam in the beginning badgering him like “what do you remember? how dont u remember if your convicted of murder” it was her making sure he didnt see her or remember anything of importance that night. i also knew jesse was some how a decoy bc of his lack of importance in the book he didnt have the characteristics of a stalker especially after he said brenda gave him kellys phone # and after sheriff steven was p much like stalker maybe but killer nahh and that p much solidified it for me. overall it was a good book im not rly a reader myself but this grasped my attention from page 1 until the end started it yesterday and finished it today
She also keeps referring to the “State of Virginia” in court. It is the “Commonwealth of Virginia” and this made me irrationally crazy!
I just finished this book last night – a friend recommended it to me, said it was awesome, and I feel bad that I didn’t really like it! All of the twists and introduction of new characters and evidence did keep me reading because I wanted to know who did it, but the overall book itself was pretty horrible.
* It needed some basic editing – sooo many missing commas, it drove me crazy!
* There were a few little inconsistencies that took me out of the story because I had to go back and check – Kelly had brown eyes when Adam first mentioned her, but blue eyes a few chapters later. Or once he showered and shaved before Rebecca came over, and then after she left, he “showered and shaved for the first time in days”.
* Lots of loose ends – he wiped his hands on his pants after touching Kelly before he left, I assume it was blood, but the police never searched his main home and found them? Why was Deputy Hudson so smarmy the whole time?
* The characters themselves were so 1-dimensional and basically caricatures – the bumbling husband, the snarky gay friend, the overbearing MIL, the idolizing assistant. There was no depth or growth at all, and none of them, including Sarah or Adam, were likable.
But ultimately, I think it was a mistake to write a book in the first person (even when it switched POV), when your twist is that one of the narrators did the crime! I don’t have the energy or desire to go back and reread the book to see if there’s any hints that she did it, but it doesn’t make sense that she would never think about how she’s framing him.
Anyways, I’ll tell me friend that I liked it and didn’t see the twist coming, hopefully she doesn’t want to talk about it too much!
Oh god I just finished this book and need to vent! Ugh wasted hours !
Damn right. This book was lousily written on so many levels. The ending where it was revealed that Bob and Sarah killed Jenna, got married to each other and even had a kid together made 0 sense. Throughout the book, Sarah constantly expressed her extreme hate for in first person, even confronting him about stealing her assistant and referring to him as a ‘self-obsessed jerk’). She was not portrayed as an unreliable narrator at all. In fact, she often speculated on who was Jenna’s ‘real killer’ and if Adam ‘really did it’, even though she did it herself. Isn’t it completely paradoxical that she often got the impulse to smack Bob across the face because of his sheer egoism while being in love with him concomitantly? Additionally, Sarah’s motives for killing Jenna were completely unsubstantiated and seemed forced. It would clearly have made more sense for her to kill her husband, Adam, instead.
Damn right. This book was lousily written on so many levels. The ending where it was revealed that Bob and Sarah killed Jenna, got married to each other, and even had a kid together made 0 sense. Throughout the book, Sarah constantly expresses her extreme hate for in first person, even confronting him about stealing her assistant and referring to him as a ‘self-obsessed jerk’). She was not portrayed as an unreliable narrator at all. In fact, she often speculated on who was Jenna’s ‘real killer’ and if Adam ‘really did it,’ even though she did it herself. Isn’t it completely paradoxical that she often got the impulse to smack Bob across the face because of his sheer egoism while being in love with him concomitantly? Additionally, Sarah’s motives for killing Jenna were completely unsubstantiated and seemed forced. It would clearly have made more sense for her to kill her husband, Adam, instead.
What about the overnight visitor? Was she just masturbating or did someone actually come into her house?
It took me out of the story when it wrote that Adam was wearing sweats and a T-shirt, and then when he brought Sarah to the kitchen counter, he unzipped his pants. I had to go back and reread it. I even asked my BF if he has ever worn sweats with a zipper 😂
Reading back a bit through Sarah’s perspective (just the first chapter, but i had the thought repeatedly throughout), it makes it clear she’s a psycho. Reading with the lenses that she knew what was going to happen, every action she does seems forced or phony. “I do this to convey as much of this emotion as I need, and then I stop”, is basically her entire persona. Still doesn’t make a lot of her internal dialogue make sense, especially as she’s trying to “solve” the case. Her and Bob still don’t make sense, would’ve made more sense if her and Stevens ended up getting involved and if Bob was the 3rd set of DNA. Something could’ve saved this book but it would’ve had to been a different author.
It took me weeks to get into this book. And now I’m mad.
The ending made no sense. She stabbed Kelly dozens of times and when Adam got up not only did he feel her next to him and felt her up, could he not *smell* the blood? That many wounds? C’mon. There were a lot of other inconsistencies as well. Meh.