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minimicropup's review against another edition
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
The Energy: Blithe, imploring, heedless
The Scene: 🇺🇸 Washington D.C. and a renovated historic mansion in Maryland.
The POV: We follow a children’s Best Interest Attorney dealing with a whirlwind case involving a nine-year old girl traumatized by her nanny's death and her parents’ impending divorce.
🎬 Tale-Telling: Stella's first-person narrative was present tense so that gave a sense of urgency for the drama, but most of the time it trended more toward melodrama. It sometimes felt like it was trying to do too much with too many storylines.
👥 Characters: Stella dominated the narrative with her self-proclaimed importance and taking the moral high ground. I was craving more depth and less posturing. Despite all the reminders about how she uses her past trauma to excel at her job, she made dangerous decisions not just for herself but for the people she is supposed to be acting in the best interest of, and we didn't really get any exploration of why she was doing that. The peripheral characters were more fleshed out, quirky, and unlikeable in a way that didn’t feel over the top.
🤓 Reader Role: Listener and observer. We get all of Stella's thoughts, justifications, and dilemmas. We rarely know more than the main character so we are sleuthing and discovering things alongside her.
🗺️ Ambiance: The setting of Washington D.C. and the renovated mansion worked well. The ‘off’ vibes in the house were felt from the start.
🔥 Fuel: The mystery around the nanny’s death and psychological suspense with the family was so compelling! But the suspense was undermined by spoon-feeding us the twists. The romance felt tacked on, like a last-minute instant-love addition. By the halfway mark I was irritated with the sub-plot of Stella’s past...I had so little interest in it, especially just as things were ramping up with the assessment.
🚙 Journey: The story started off promising with the eerie undertones of a troubled family. I feel like it needed polishing because most subplots started off interesting but fizzled out awkwardly in the middle of other storylines. The endings felt rushed to conclude and I disliked the action scenes. It did that thing where the ‘big bad’ and potential victim pause to have a deep discussion in the middle of high-stakes pursuit and escape.
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🐺 Growls: Contrived plot points. The YA-like writing style with overt guidance and lack of nuanced character development (on the plus side, this could be a good book for readers transitioning from YA to adult novels).
🐕 Howls: Trying to do too much by having Stella’s history compete with the mystery of the nanny’s death and the family assessment.
🐩 Tail Wags: The core murder mystery and the unsettling "creepy kid" vibes. The psychological elements, Rose, and her family dynamics. The sleuthing and interviews with people who knew the nanny.
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Mood Reading Match-Up:
- Melodramatic characters with touches of ‘how far would you go for your family”
- Amateur sleuthing and whodunnit foul play or folly mystery
- Psychological suspense with shady family secrets
- Commentary and light themes about manipulation, lies, child trauma, vulnerabilities of childhood, loneliness, and family secrets.
Content Heads-Up: Loss of a parent (in childhood). Drug abuse and overdose (recall, on page). Infidelity (descriptive, on page). Violence. Child abuse, emotional neglect.
Rep: Bisexual. Heterosexual. Traumatic mutism. White, ambiguous, and Latine/Latino characters.
👀 Format: Advance reader's copy from St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley.
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Content Warnings
Moderate: Infidelity, Child abuse, Death of parent, and Drug abuse
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