Ich fand den Anfang wirklich gelungen und konnte direkt mit Olivia sympathisieren. Leider war für mich relativ schnell klar, in welche Richtung dieses Hauptmysterium geht, und war dann nur noch genervt davon, wie lange das Buch braucht, bis endlich Antworten kommen.

Ich hasse es auch leider wie die Pest, wenn Figuren wichtige Informationen zurückhalten, damit die Story noch ein bisschen länger hinausgezögert werden kann. Hier gab es wirklich keinen Grund, warum Olivia nicht von Anfang an erklärt wird, was es mit Gallant auf sich hat. Eine Figur sagt sogar am Ende, dass es zu seinen Zielen besser gepasst hätte, wenn er von Anfang an ehrlich gewesen wäre.

Leider finde ich auch, dass die tatsächliche Auflösung ein bisschen zu vage bleibt. Genauso wie ich mir vage vorstellen konnte, was passieren könnte, passiert es dann auch genauso vage. Fast so, als wäre die Story noch im ersten Entwurf gewesen.

Die Atmosphäre und der Schreibstil haben mir sehr gut gefallen, aber ich denke leider, dass das Buch am Ende des Jahres in Vergessenheit geraten wird.

My God, this book wants to be four different genres at once and never truly commits to any of them. There’s the murder mystery combined with family drama, comedy, and a sprinkle of romance. All the characters are insufferable or annoying, except maybe the two main characters, but even they are a little too cliché of an archetype for me. If you really think about the story and everything that leads up to the murders, it’s all over the place and has soap opera vibes. The way some of the consequences at the end are handled was also very weird and unsatisfying to me.

But let me tell you… I ate this book up. The premise definitely draws you in immediately. I finished it so quickly and was never bored for a second. I laughed, cringed, and even cried (yes, how tf did that happen?). This book should not work for me, but somehow it kind of did? Giving this more than 3 stars would feel unfair to the other books I’ve read this year. Top guilty pleasure for sure!

If “trust the process” was a book…

I listened to the audiobook version, but I'm not sure if I would have liked this as much if I had actually had to read all 800 pages. This book was never boring to me, but there was also no real peak of tension towards the end? Well, besides a very weird character death.

I will always appreciate a crazy worldbuilding choice and forgive a lot of the issues that come with such a big swing. However, I’m also someone who prefers character-driven stories, and this is certainly not one of them. Almost all the characters from book 1 are cast aside. I still like Vis, but how do you even judge his character in this one? Welp, I’m very excited to see what book 3 will bring, because that will ultimately decide how this one works for me in retrospect.