Have you ever finished a book out of spite? This was one of those for me. I’ve been looking for more horror reads, and saw this on a rec list (a list I will not be reading more from, since B&B was so far from the mark of what I was looking for). And I rarely write reviews, but this one had me so irritated as I finished it that I felt like I needed to see if it was just me that things weren’t clicking for.
The premise of this was intriguing, and in fairness the cover is extremely well done. It’s just the only thing that was well done.
This book is like if someone saw Hannibal and liked it enough to get inspired, but took out all of the pacing, tension, and imagery that made it compelling, sprinkled in meme references that will be outdated in a year, and made everything aggressively heterosexual. This world with serial killers around every corner isn’t grounded enough to be realistic, and too restrained to actually lean into the camp potential of the genre. The romance arc is weirdly cookie cutter and bland even with the gory set dressing, and even the moments that show a decent spark aren’t given enough room to let you actually care about them. The obligatory forced third act breakup lasts for literally an hour. The sex scenes manage to be both excessive and somehow boring.
And even worse, I just couldn’t care about these characters. They’re the paper dolls of a true crime girlie, with no purpose other than being hot and liking murder. The heroine is somehow simultaneously so brilliant that the FBI has no idea what she’s doing, but has to be rescued by the hero almost every time they go out together. Four years of relationship development is crammed into scenes that blur together so fast that the timeline might as well not matter. Monthly meetups would’ve felt pretty much exactly the same with the amount of time spent on developing the characters and relationship. I can’t think of a single person I’d inflict this book on, and I will not be looking for the rest of the series.
Also arcGIS doesn’t work like that.
by meticulous-fragments