aliciaclarereads's Reviews (1.25k)

I didn't enjoy this as much as GONE GIRL, but I think Gillian Flynn did an excellent job exploring womanhood and mothers and daughters. Early on, I had a sense of how this was going to end, but Flynn still threw in a few things that surprised me. Also the narrator on the audiobook was EXCELLENT. I'd definitely love to listen to more books she's narrated.

WOW

I guess this is more a 3.5? I really liked the hero and heroine and there were a lot of hilarious moments, especially when the book comes full circle and connects back to the opening scene. However, there was a lot of plot especially in the last 3 chapters that felt rushed and unnecessary. The book either needed to be a 100 pages longer to flesh out the plot details, or cut out certain parts altogether.

William dying was just totally unnecessary. I was really expecting that it would end up being Malcolm tricked Royce into thinking William attacked but no the whole 2 evil stepbrothers thing was just basically totally unresolved. I am glad that Jennifer came around to finally seeing that her dad was a total piece of shit. Also why did the horse have to die in the beginning, what the fuck???????

The first 60% of this was great. The characters were a bit too prone to dramatic outbursts, but it was still really fun. And then... well the hero just became irredeemable.

He rapes the heroine. Based on a RUMOR from a character who he KNOWS HATES the heroine. WTF

Whitney and Clayton had two huge misunderstandings that was the exact same conflict and had the exact same outcome. It just draaaaaagged.

Reading Judith McNaught's forward made a lot of sense for this story though. Basically her book kept getting rejected because there was too much plot, which is the issue I had with Kingdom of Dreams, and it's kinda the issue I have now. Her response to this rejection? Add more plot! I don't mind books that are long with intricate plots and plenty of characters, but... the plot needs to make sense. You can't just have the characters refuse to speak to each other and call it a good plot.

ESPECIALLY after they got married like why would he not be like "hey can you explain this letter please" oh my god

Oh, I really wish this was a novel instead of a novella!