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A review by bookph1le
Missing Pieces by Heather Gudenkauf
1.0
Wow, that was startlingly bad. My no-spoiler pet peeves include:
1. An apparent allergy to pronouns on the author's part. This is a personal pet peeve of mine, so it may not annoy others, but it drove me crazy how the author repeatedly used characters' names.
2. This is one of those books where a supposedly canny woman, one who used to be a hard-hitting journalist, suddenly becomes a bit soft in the head because plot.
3. None of the plot twists surprised me. Not a one. This is not because I'm so clever, but because the red herrings and foreshadowing are so heavy-handed that the book practically sits up and screams for the reader to notice them. Well, mission accomplished, book.
4. This book feels so half-baked, especially at the end. It rushes to conclusions and includes a cringe-worthy epilogue that I saw coming from a mile away. The only thing that really kept me reading was my desire to see if I'd figured it out--I had--but the pacing was decent for the most part, until it suddenly petered out. It was like the book was tired of itself and just wanted itself to be over already.
And for one mild spoiler, in which I address the culprit without giving away who the culprit is:
5. The book falls back on the stereotypical "the culprit did it because the culprit was straight-up crazy". I really hate this. It's so lazy and it's such an offensive misunderstanding of how mental illness works. So many mysteries and thrillers do this far too often.
1. An apparent allergy to pronouns on the author's part. This is a personal pet peeve of mine, so it may not annoy others, but it drove me crazy how the author repeatedly used characters' names.
2. This is one of those books where a supposedly canny woman, one who used to be a hard-hitting journalist, suddenly becomes a bit soft in the head because plot.
3. None of the plot twists surprised me. Not a one. This is not because I'm so clever, but because the red herrings and foreshadowing are so heavy-handed that the book practically sits up and screams for the reader to notice them. Well, mission accomplished, book.
4. This book feels so half-baked, especially at the end. It rushes to conclusions and includes a cringe-worthy epilogue that I saw coming from a mile away. The only thing that really kept me reading was my desire to see if I'd figured it out--I had--but the pacing was decent for the most part, until it suddenly petered out. It was like the book was tired of itself and just wanted itself to be over already.
And for one mild spoiler, in which I address the culprit without giving away who the culprit is:
5. The book falls back on the stereotypical "the culprit did it because the culprit was straight-up crazy". I really hate this. It's so lazy and it's such an offensive misunderstanding of how mental illness works. So many mysteries and thrillers do this far too often.