I would give this book two stars, but that feels like saying there's absolutely nothing worthwhile about it. It's fine. It's not the worst book I've ever read; it's just... meh.

Probably the thing that is most baffling to me about this book is why she chose to set it in Chicago. Setting the book in a country foreign to her made for all kinds of weird word choice for her characters and odd moments of explanation (as if a twenty-something girl in the '90s would have no idea who Jackie Robinson was), not to mention sometimes distractingly bad caricatures of dialect. For some reason she changes the narrative voice when a chapter focuses on a different character, which is only particularly noticeable when she tries to write black people. I cringed through those chapters, embarrassed for her for writing them and kind of offended at the stereotypes.

This is another place the book suffers. The characters are stereotypes more than interesting and developed people. Most of the time, we don't even get to know them before they're murdered horribly -- which again brings up a lot of race issues I don't think Beukes was equipped to deal with. Kirby, the de facto protagonist, is boring, as is the journalist she inexplicably has a will-they-won't-they relationship with. There's no reason for them to develop chemistry unless you just accept that older men and their young protege's will inevitably want to sleep together.

On top of it all, the time travel element is largely unnecessary other than for it to be the reason the killer hasn't been caught. Even as Kirby attempts to unravel it, her realization of what's happening is underwhelming and anticlimactic, ultimately not doing anything to help her track down the killer. She could have never figured it out, and it would have made literally zero difference.

I expected more from a book Tana French called "something special." It's not. It's not special.