Scan barcode
A review by emperorcupcake
Out of the Ashes by Kara Thomas
2.5
Oh man, I wanted to love this. It has one of my favourite kinds of plots, and look at this gorgeous cover!! And it was so close to being good, if only it hadn't tried to throw everything into the crockpot. It's like Fridge Clean Out Soup. This is how you end up with two week old celery in your soup. Random Chinese leftovers. And pickles, cause pickles are a vegetable, right?
I looove a "person returns to their small hometown and long buried secrets come out" story. So I was excited for this. And while I did enjoy the atmosphere and lived in feel of the small, upstate NY town, I could not keep track of all these characters and how they were related. And some of them had storylines that just went... nowhere? While the main mystery is solved, it felt like there were a lot of things left hanging that just didn't even need to be there. There was a whole reveal about the uncle that literally meant nothing and went nowhere. why???
And then there's the absolute chaos demon of a main character. This woman gets inexplicably horny whenever she's in the same room as a man. Which I mean fine, get it girl, but you're in town because your family was murdered and you just found out your sister might be alive. Right after the townie hunk she slept with* gets killed, she's making moves on the detective investigating her family's murder! Focus, here! She was so frustrating, like she seems to do all this random shit without any introspection at all. And yet she wasn't unhinged enough to be interesting. She was just... confusing.
*and by "slept with" I mean "grabbed him in the middle of an apple orchard and got down to business against a tree," bc this woman seriously has no impulse control.
There was some good stuff here, it just didn't come together for me.
I looove a "person returns to their small hometown and long buried secrets come out" story. So I was excited for this. And while I did enjoy the atmosphere and lived in feel of the small, upstate NY town, I could not keep track of all these characters and how they were related. And some of them had storylines that just went... nowhere? While the main mystery is solved, it felt like there were a lot of things left hanging that just didn't even need to be there. There was a whole reveal about the uncle that literally meant nothing and went nowhere. why???
And then there's the absolute chaos demon of a main character. This woman gets inexplicably horny whenever she's in the same room as a man. Which I mean fine, get it girl, but you're in town because your family was murdered and you just found out your sister might be alive. Right after the townie hunk she slept with* gets killed, she's making moves on the detective investigating her family's murder! Focus, here! She was so frustrating, like she seems to do all this random shit without any introspection at all. And yet she wasn't unhinged enough to be interesting. She was just... confusing.
*and by "slept with" I mean "grabbed him in the middle of an apple orchard and got down to business against a tree," bc this woman seriously has no impulse control.
There was some good stuff here, it just didn't come together for me.