Sarah Pearse

The Retreat

Jule

There is one thing this book gave me: a new pet peeve. 
Without the epilogue, the book is 347 pages long and consists of 99 chapters ( i know …). That means a chapter is approx. 3.5 pages short. Why would you make every chapter sound like this ground breaking cliff hanger has just been revealed? They were just random endings for chapters, but every time there was this ONE LAST SENTENCE full with pretentious meaning and depth trying to make it look like a mic drop moment - WHY???

I am SO disappointed with this. I gave her first book three stars which I though was okay, but also her debut novel, so what - room for improvement, right? 

That’s the exact reason why I bought and read her second book: to see how the author’s writing and the plot and her main character developed over the second book. I thought, well, she got a major push by being a Reese’s Book Club pick, so the pressure is on.

When i tell you this book was literally COPY AND PASTE. I am not talking „oh the author found a concept that works for her and now she’s putting it to the next stage“. NO: Different setting, same plot twists, same dull characters and the worst of all: NO CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT - nada, nichts, niènte.

The writing was sloppy and lazy. The characters were shallow and indistinguishable, the pacing was off consistently. The story unraveled on the spot, because it just had to work somehow. Therefore, there was no way for the reader to anticipate anything as the plot wasn’t build throughout the story. 

At the same time, when reading a mystery-thriller with a DETECTIVE, I do not want to feel like the smartest person in the room. Our protagonist waved literally everything off to circumstance or chance. Like isn’t it your job to NOT think that? 

So to me it felt like her own book got away from her. It looked like she needed to deliver a year after putting out her first novel, when really, she should have taken the time to actually work out the storyline and her characters.

The Retreat

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