Holly Jolly Readlist - Book 5 Review!
Title - Everyone Who Can Forgive Me Is Dead
Author - Jenny Hollander
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spice 🌶 - .5
scare 😱 - 1
plot 📖 - 3
characters 🧍- 3
stars ⭐ - 3
Before I begin, can we get some commotion for the cover?!
That cover art is absolutely GORGEOUS!
Now, onto the book itself...
First 90% - trudging through.
Lat 10% - somehow made the first 90% feel worth it?
The premise of this book is so interesting and sets up the plot to be a knock out of the park. Unfortunately, once I got into the book - actually, scratch that, I didn't get into the book. That was the whole problem. I was reading words on a page after words on a page. I didn't feel anything for any of the characters until the last 50 pages of the book. Charlie emotionally separates herself from everyone and everything, including the reader. You seem to be on the outside of the story and it does not create an immersive experience. There were countless times in the book when I was genuinely confused about what was happening. I feel like the timelines jumped back and forth a lot in both the "then" and "now" timelines. It made it very hard to follow. Don't even get me started with the interjections of "now" Charlie in parenthesis in the "then" timeline. None of the interjections were needed and just annoyed me while reading.
The ending did make up for many of the issues I had throughout the rest of the book. I have to remind myself that books with endings tied with a bow do not make up for 250+ pages of reading I did not enjoy.
Everyone Who Can Forgive Me is Dead is a decent debut novel. Hollander had some fantastic ideas for the book, the execution just missed the mark.
Many thanks to Goodreads, Minotaur Books, and Jenny Hollander for hosting the giveaway. All opinions and thoughts above are my own.
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