★★★★★ 3
Mixed feelings about this book
Format: Kindle
I do not recommend this to anyone suffering from trauma. There are some very triggering things in this book and it isn’t a justifiable risk for anyone who has PTSD.
However, if your life has been relatively “normal” and fairly mundane, then you might enjoy reading this book as an escape into a series of exciting events that put the characters through major suffering.
If books got ratings the way movies and TV shows do, I would rate it MA (mature audience) or R (restricted audience) for language, violence, sex, and thematic content. Reader discretion advised.
Pros- fast pace, twisty plot, mysteries, surprises, lots of action, hard to put down
Cons- often unrealistic portrayal of how real people would actually act in the various situations in the book, and sometimes the situations themselves felt a bit of a stretch
This was a plot-driven book with one-dimensional characters- “bad guys” predictably did and said horrible things, “good guys” reliably said and did “good” things. Nobody really surprised the reader, even when they did unexpected things, because it was more a matter of getting the full picture and then realizing that their actions were fully consistent with their place in the “good guy” or “bad guy” category.
Sometimes I found myself wondering if the author had any understanding of how trauma affects people. Those I know who suffer from PTSD or CPTSD don’t behave like the traumatized characters in this story. In many ways, it felt like a kind of wishful fantasy of how nice it would be if people who had been severely traumatized could recover in a relatively short time and in a straightforward way. Even taking some time to research how CPTSD and PTSD can affect trauma survivors could have helped the author write more realistic characters. They were overall too successful, healthy, and emotionally consistent, and said and did too many “right” things the “right” way. Conversely, when the perpetrators did things or said things, they were often too horrid and almost cartoonishly villainous.
There were a handful of ambiguous folks who defied being neatly categorized as “bad” or “good” but the central cast of characters were largely a flat and static bunch.
Nobody seemed to grow as a person or overcome any personal flaws, except for a couple of peripheral characters, and that growth happened largely off-page and was revealed at the end of the story rather than showcased as a central aspect of the book.
In terms of pacing and the twistiness of the plot itself, it was very fast-paced and intense. It was a creative story full of mysteries to solve. Many times I couldn’t pull myself away from reading it because I was so curious about how things would unfold and what was really going on.
Overall, I found it to be an interesting read, but the unconvincing way the characters behaved, in light of how real live people respond to trauma, kept taking me out of the story and making me occasionally roll my eyes or shake my head at the cluelessness of the portrayal of traumatized people.
It would require some spoilers to get more specific than that. If you don’t mind shallowly sketched characters who seem to be permanently locked into their “good guy” or “bad guy” identities, and you enjoy fast-paced thrillers with twisty plots and convoluted storylines, this one is worth your time. I wouldn’t recommend it to most of the people I personally know, though, for the reasons I mentioned.
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Reviewed in the United States on October 12, 2025
