(This review was first posting to my Goodreads account in July. Again, there is a reason this is called The Forgotten Blog)
This was such a hard book to rate, but I think I'm going to just go with my initial rating while I had been reading, which was 3.5.
This was a very interesting book. I don't normally pick up thrillers, let alone psychological ones, so I'm wondering how much of that influenced my reading experience.
I will say, that this author has a clear voice, and I could see everything vividly. However, I felt like the characters fell into categories (the bitchy boss, the smug rival, the quirky mentor, etc.) and, while they felt like real people, in a way it felt like they were filling a mould, and not really allowed to be PEOPLE, if that makes any sense.
They seemed to lack something, some kind of spark that brought them truly to life, separated them from the clichés they filled and prevented me from truly connecting to any of them, or even really caring about what happened beyond finding out why Alicia wouldn't speak and what exactly had happened that night.
There were things that bothered me about the portrayal of the mental illness in this book, but as I have no knowledge of any of the illnesses described and/or hinted at, I have no way of knowing if they were accurate or insulting, so I'll just leave it at that.
There were some instances, particularly where the psychiatric facility was concerned, that I found myself raising an eyebrow in disbelief. I highly doubt that mentally ill patients are allowed the free rein the ones at the Grove seemed to have. I have no knowledge of mental health facilities or anything of the like, but I doubt they would allow patients to smoke and wander around with seemingly no supervision other than the occasional nurse. I do think that the Grove was mentioned at one point as being a little decrepit and slack in some areas, or at least I think it was hinted. I finished it last night in kind of a daze, to be perfectly honest lol.
I enjoyed the ending, though. It's part of why I am so torn on how to rate this, and threw my perspective of this book and its narrative off balance, to which I tip my hat (well, if I had a hat) to the author for accomplishing. I had spoiled myself on the twist, but it was done in such a way that I didn't feel like I lost much. I also felt as though my knowing that twist allowed me to follow closer, though I might just be dense when it comes to thrillers, psychological or not.
Overall, the author has a clear voice, and definitely has talent for weaving interesting and intricate stories. Whether it compares to other thrillers, I can't say, as it's not my usual genre, but it certainly held my attention. I had started reading it slowly and then ended up reading until 5am just so I could find out what happened.
I know that most of this review has been negative, but I did enjoy this book. It was a nice, quick and easy read, which might be an odd thing to say about a psychological thriller. It's just a very tricky book for me to truly express my feelings about. I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it either. It was an okay book for me.
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