I received a free digital ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Rating | ⭐⭐
A teenage girl wakes up on the side of a road in the middle of nowhere, her memories of who she is or how she got there are gone. A police officer comes along and picks her up, taking her to the station. A man arrives later, sick with worry, having been looking for his daughter for hours. He claims to be the girl's father, her name is Mary. He has her school ID and birth certificate, Wayne must be her dad, right?
Lola and Drew had a huge fight and she got out of the car, storming off to who knows where. DF\rew exects that after they both calm down, he and Lola will talk things through. Except now Lola is missing and everyone in town thinks he murdered her.
I love a good mystery and the premise made it seem like this would be a good one.
Psych!
It was not.
I can't for the life of me understand how it is rated so highly, or how it managed to be a Goodreads Choice nominee. The only reason I gave it a second star was because this one did not have a happy ending. Too often that is how YA thrillers end, and that's just not how life works; people don't always get what they want. Otherwise this would have been just one more disappointing predictable waste of time. Instead, it was only a disappointing predictable waste of time until the end.
All of the characters were annoying, except Madisen. And not just high school annoying, but annoying annoying. I don't mind unlikable characters, if they're written well and it furthers the story. But they're not unlikable in any way that makes sense, they just...are. And poorly written, at that. So messy.
There were so many plot holes, the book might as well have been made of swiss cheese.
The biggest one of all, was the 'mystery' of whether or not Lola was Mary. And it's not a spoiler to say she was, in fact, NOT. Lola had been missing for over a month, yet Mary's story takes place in a few days. How was this not taken into consideration? Was the author just counting on readers to not pay attention to the timelines? If so, how insulting. If not, then the author is not so smart.
The second thing that makes no sense is WHY DID WAYNE EVEN GO TO THE POLICE STATION?? He had no way of knowing that Mary had amnesia. All he knew was that she had somehow escaped captivity and he had to find her. But he thought it would be a good idea to look for her at the police station because...why? If she did not have amnesia and had been able to tell the police he had kidnapped her, he'd have been arrested the moment he walked in and Mary started screaming that he was her kidnapper. Makes zero fucking sense.
There are so many more examples that honestly, it's exhausting. If Mary had been in a car accident, where was the car? Why did the police not go back to the scene and investigate? She was so injured she could barely move, so it's not as though the car could have been miles away. And why didn't Drew just come out and say he and Lola had broken up? Doing this would have actually helped prove his innocence.
If you can ignore these, and other, gaping plot holes and inconsistencies, then by all means - go ahead and waste your time. Otherwise, not recommended.