On the idyllic island of Guernsey, twelve-year-old Celeste Everett vanishes from her bed during a storm.
The last people to see Celeste were her best friends—identical twin sisters who refuse to tell the whole truth about that night.
The Everetts are one of the island’s wealthiest and most powerful families, while the twins’ mother, Jess, is a struggling single parent with secrets of her own. But when suspicion begins to circle her daughters, Jess is drawn into the search for the missing girl—and into the orbit of a family used to getting exactly what they want.
As the magical island turns in on itself, Jess must decide how far she is willing to go to protect her children. Because in a small community, you’re always being watched. And someone knows exactly what happened that night.
So, I just finished this book, and to be honest, I'm not even sure what the hell I just read. To begin with, although this was billed as a mystery, I didn't find anything particularly mysterious about it. In fact, the whole mystery surrounding what happened to Celeste seemed to be solved pretty early on. The problem wasn't so much figuring out what happened, but trying to keep track of everything else the author decided to throw into the story along the way. Because apparently, one mystery just wasn't enough.
Aside from what happened to Celeste, we have the secondary plot of whether one of the twins is actually a sociopath or simply a kleptomaniac. Then there's the question of whether their father will get out of prison and, if he does, how long it will take before he comes looking for them. We also have the looming possibility that someone will discover their mother doesn't have the proper paperwork to be working on the island, a politician who may or may not be involved in something shady, and a police officer who may or may not be involved in covering it all up. Oh, and did I mention the local legends about werewolves? Because apparently, those are important enough that people are putting on wolf masks and celebrating them, too.
Can you see where this is going? Because I certainly struggled to. It felt like the author had a dozen different ideas for stories and decided to cram them all into one book, regardless of whether they actually worked together. Instead of creating an intriguing, layered mystery, the result was a plot that kept wandering off in different directions until I was left wondering what I was supposed to be concentrating on in the first place. The sheer number of characters didn't help matters, either. There were so many people to keep track of that they occasionally started blending into one another, and I eventually found myself having to keep a list of who was who just so I could refer back to it. And while I appreciate an author trying to give their characters distinct personalities, there comes a point when you have to wonder whether all these people and their various storylines are actually adding anything to the overall plot.
Unfortunately, the writing was just as all over the place as the story itself. There were times when I genuinely couldn't figure out where the author was trying to take things. At various points, it felt as though we were heading into supernatural territory, with all the talk of werewolves, mermaids, and other local legends. Then the story would veer off into something almost religious, with people seeking out places where they could heal and escape their pasts. And just when I thought I had some idea of what kind of story I was reading, we'd be off in another direction entirely. Like the sub-plot involving Jess and the question of who was stalking her. Except that part was pretty obvious, so the real mystery seemed to be how this person was managing to do it. And let me tell you, when the explanation finally arrived, I was left scratching my head because it made absolutely no sense. Unless Jess' husband was psychic, there was no plausible way for him to know where she and the girls had gone. Although, if we're going to start entertaining the possibility of psychic abilities, that might explain how one twin seemed to be able to “feel the energy” of the other and locate her no matter where she was on the island. So, who knows? Maybe I was onto something after all.
Another issue I had was the writing itself, particularly the descriptions. I'm all for descriptive writing when it helps establish a setting or gives me a better picture of what's happening, but there were times when the descriptions became unnecessarily elaborate, and some of them didn't even make sense. For example, a parked car is described as being “low-slung, impossibly sleek, mid-pounce.” I'm sorry, mid-pounce? It's a parked car, not a wild animal preparing to launch itself at an unsuspecting victim. I understand the author was trying to convey something about the car's appearance, but that description had me stopping to wonder what, exactly, I was supposed to be picturing. And then we have Lena, who spends a considerable amount of time training to become a more competitive swimmer. We're told that “with all the training her skin started to scale, like she really was turning into a mermaid.” Excuse me? Are these magical waters or something? I spent plenty of time swimming in my younger years, and not once did my skin start scaling. At first, I wondered whether this was some strange way of describing toned muscles or a change in her physique, but then her twin actually teases her about having “fish-tail skin.” So apparently, we're meant to believe that all this swimming is turning Lena into a mermaid. Or at least giving her the skin of one. And if that really is what's happening, perhaps someone should have mentioned it earlier, because I certainly wasn't expecting a fitness routine to come with a side of aquatic transformation.
And if all of this weren't enough to send my eye twitching already, there were also several glaring continuity errors that made it difficult to stay immersed in the story.
We're given a detailed description of a tent being erected for an upcoming celebration, only to be told later that it was being set up on the actual day of the celebrations. Then there are the wolf masks the girls find at one of their sleepovers, initially described as “beaded and furry,” only for us to learn a few paragraphs later that the girls painted tissue paper and stuck it onto the masks to create the fur. So were the masks already furry, or were the girls making them furry? Because those are two rather different things. And let's not forget the moment when Jess is following Shane on the island of Sark, only for him to be swimming in the ocean in the next scene. Did I miss where he ran off and left her to follow the path? Because one minute he's leading her towards the shore, and the next he's apparently in the water. These may seem like small things individually, but when they keep happening, they pull you right out of the story and leave you wondering why nobody caught them during editing.
And that's a shame, because there was one thing I genuinely appreciated about this book: the setting. The author did a wonderful job bringing Guernsey to life. The island itself was vividly portrayed, and I found myself wanting to learn more about its actual history. There was a sense of place here that I really enjoyed, and I wish the fictional story had been strong enough to match it. Unfortunately, the setting can only carry a book so far.
DISCLAIMER: I received a complimentary copy of this novel from the publisher. This has not affected my review in any way. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are 100% my own.
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