My Rating: 3 stars
I finished an ARC of this book yesterday and to be honest, I'm still trying to process how I feel about it. While this was a good story overall and Sally Hepworth is no doubt a talented writer (I've read other books she's written and liked them all well enough), I will be honest in saying that I wasn't particularly enamored with this one after I finished it. For one, I didn't like the ending, and two, the way some of the female characters in the story were portrayed (especially in relation to the male characters) bothered me more than I expected. Also, plot-wise, there was way too much ambiguity throughout the story in my opinion (yes, I know this is a thriller and in a sense, some ambiguity is expected, but still…) — this annoyed me a bit because I felt like I had to suspend disbelief way too many times (especially with Tully's and Heather's story arcs) — not only that though, some parts of the story actually didn't make sense, (including the ending). When I finished reading this book, my first reaction was to scratch my head and try to parse what exactly I had just read. My second reaction was an urge to go back and re-download the ARC because I thought, perhaps, I was missing a few pages at the end somewhere, because the ending of the book frustrated me. My third reaction was a curiosity to read through reviews to see 1) what other readers' reactions were, and 2) whether I was the only one who didn't really "get" the story. And this is where my entire reading experience with this book veered off into something I had never encountered before.
As I was reading reviews, I came across various comments that mentioned about the finished copy of the book actually having a very different ending from the ARC version. Given that I wasn't keen on the story's ending (in the version I had read), I was curious, so naturally, I hunted down a finished copy of the book so I could read the "new" ending. As it turns out, it wasn't just the ending that changed — majority of the last chapter (the one right before the epilogue) had changed as well. Now of course, I've read enough ARCs to understand that changes between the advance and finished copies are common…but the thing is, these changes were actually QUITE significant— to the point that it took the story in an ENTIRELY different direction. In fact, in my opinion, it wouldn't be a stretch to say that those changes, even though only to the last chapter and the epilogue (at least I think that was it, as I didn't re-read the entire book), turned this into a completely different story from what I had originally read.
While I have to admit that the changes did make the entire story more believable (not to mention the parts that didn't make sense earlier actually made sense now), the overall experience itself (reading the ARC, then finding out that the finished copy had significant changes and subsequently having to hunt down a finished copy to read the changes) unfortunately left a bad taste in my mouth. In a way, I felt cheated, but more upsetting was that I felt like I had wasted my time reading an ARC when I could've just read the finished copy (this is exacerbated by the fact that I already don't have much time to read due to work and life obligations, plus I have a mile-high TBR that I'm trying to get through). Perhaps I'm overreacting and I wouldn't fault anyone for saying that, but for a reader like me, who views the reading experience as being just as important as the contents of the book being read, this type of thing affects me more than it probably should.
Having said all that, I decided to rate this one based on my initial reaction to it, which is that I thought the premise had a lot of potential and Rachel's story arc especially kept me engaged and absorbed in the story, but overall the way things went down with the plot, (and the ending) left much to be desired. So I ended up rating this 3 stars based on the ARC (of course, if I had read only the finished copy in its entirety, my rating would most likely be different).
Lastly, I will say that I am very obviously the outlier with this one so definitely check out other reviews as well. And if you do decide to pick this one up, might be better off reading the finished copy rather than an ARC, as it will likely impact the way you react to the story.
Received ARC from St. Martin's Press via NetGalley.
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