This is honestly a tough one to review … It’s neither good nor bad.

It’s meant to be a psychological thriller and has some aspects of one, but the writing is weak and there are continuity issues, so the excitement just isn’t there.

It has a part that is absurdly dark and, I expect the author’s way of trying to show what a psycho someone was, but it didn’t really fit the rest of the book for me. It was obscene, and this is spoken as someone who loves dark reads—the darker the better. The thing is, this wasn’t a dark read, outside of this one part. (I won’t spoil but if you’ve already read it, I suspect you know.) That scene was just plain unhinged, but that character … ‘unhinged’ isn’t the word I’d use. I think she was supposed to be but she was mostly just painted as a master manipulator who, despite authorities knowing of many of her crimes, has managed to stay out of prison and off everyone’s radar, etc.

Things that I expect were intended to be twists were very much not, you could spot them coming a mile away.

It is heart wrenching at times, at least conceptually. It didn’t actually pull at my heart strings due to the poor writing, and just feeling generally disconnected.

I do think with stronger writing, this could be pretty epic. As it is, it reads more like a draft that still needs lots of polishing.

My rating, if forced to choose one, lies around the ‘2-star’ marking for “disappointing” on most platforms.

2 stars.