I’ve read several of Joshilyn Jackson’s previous novels and liked them all well enough, so I picked up her newest work, Missing Sister, with a certain amount of anticipation, especially after reading the interesting premise and understanding that this would be another novel in the thriller / suspense category, which she has been pretty solid in judging from past books I’ve read. Indeed, this one started out fine – a bit slow burn, yes, but I was okay with that because I figured Jackson was setting up the backstory and the pace would pick up later once the action started happening (more on this later). Though with that said, I do have to say that, from the start, I honestly did not like the main character Penny Albright – not only did she come across to me as perpetually immature and frustratingly whiny, she was also entirely unconvincing as a police officer. The entire time I was reading, I couldn’t shake the impression of Penny as a petulant teenager playing make believe cop -- her character is actually in her late twenties, I think, but she talks like a 15 year old (sorry, but it’s hard for me to take a cop seriously who constantly describes another person as sitting “crisscross applesauce”). Of course, it also didn’t help that Penny as a character was written in a way that I typically can’t stand – the “damsel in distress” type who is forever justifying her every thought and action (which, because the story is narrated in first person, felt like she was endlessly debating with herself in her head), constantly berating herself and putting herself down (she actually calls herself “dumb” and “stupid” on multiple occasions), and then backing all that up with one nonsensical decision after another (after another, after another, ad nauseam). But Penny wasn’t the only annoying character – interestingly enough, every character in the story actually frustrated me in some way, which unfortunately made it difficult for me to stay invested in the story, since being able to connect with at least one of the characters (or, minimally, feeling like I want to root for them) is crucial for me and I didn't find any of that here.
Annoying characters aside, I was hoping the story would at least be enough to make this a worthwhile read for me, but unfortunately, I also had issues there as well. Technically, the entire story didn’t work for me, but the plot was especially problematic, as it had way too many holes in it, to the point that it became distracting. Speaking of distractions, I also felt that there was a lot of unnecessary “fluff” that bogged the story down – things such as stretched out descriptions of minute details (there was one scene that literally spent paragraphs describing everything the character sees within the half second it took to turn their head), drawn-out conversations about irrelevant things that seemed to have nothing to do with the story, and weird scenes where characters seem to be hallucinating and blubbering nonsense one minute but then speak coherently and seem completely fine the next minute. Overall, so much of the story didn’t make sense and I found myself having to suspend disbelief for so long that I ended up skimming large chunks of the story because I couldn’t bear the ridiculousness any longer.
With all that said, there were some bright spots, such as the set up in the opening pages, as well as the reveal at the end, which I didn’t figure out – but as a whole, the story was difficult to follow (because the writing was all over the place) and the frustrating aspects outweighed the non-frustrating ones too much for me.
While this book was a definite “miss” for me, it hasn’t put me off from reading Jackson’s other works -- though admittedly, I will probably be more selective in terms of choosing which ones to read (maybe I’ll stick with the historical-themed stories instead of the mystery / thrillers).
Received ARC from William Morrow via NetGalley.
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