This is rated so low because the ending was terrible. The story was so compelling and I was very interested in the forensics, the environmental discussions + the ancient body, but the ending was so underwhelming and boring that I feel like I wasted my time.

Milo being so hot and sexy and slutty is what kept this book from being a DNF. I didn’t hate this but I get why people did.

There wasn’t really a lot of plot in this one, and while I am all for a romance, where the driver of the story is their love, this book was given a plot that just never really took off or had any activity in it. The “nosy townspeople“ in the small town were never really introduced, and there was never any conflict with them, the female lead is described as “the town darling“ with no explanation as to why they all like her, the brother is building a brewery in what sounds to be a town with literally just a grocery store and a bakery and that is it? I know it’s a small town, but visually it just seemed like there was a single street and they were four buildings on it and two of them are homes? 

I buddy read this with Shay and one of the things that we both had an issue with was the fact that there were a lot of extremely heavy themes in this book (Alzheimer’s, cancer, child abuse) that were brought into the story and never really treated with the kind of seriousness and care that they deserved. They felt like anecdotes to the story that didn’t really align with any of the characters, motivations or behavior patterns, and also seemed like background content? If you were going to write a novel with heavy elements, then those heavy elements should be part of the story and not just kind of thrown in there the way they were with this book.

End another thing! I have no idea why prudence is a poet. Nothing was explained about that or done with that information. It’s also unclear to me what Milo being an artist has to do with anything other than just that he knows her mother from childhood. This is just another case of the author, introducing a bunch of defining points to character development and not doing anything with them. The result is a bunch of flat characters that are just sexy and that’s it.

ALSO. Milo implied he was going to put it in her butt and then that never happened. This is what has upset me the most I think 

3.7/5

I did enjoy reading this book. The writing quality was very good, the dystopia world that was built was extremely interesting and I was super invested in the zoo on Alcatraz. I wish that we had gotten to see a little bit more about this world or maybe that the author had used this post apocalyptic-esque world to make some broader connections to social issues or just do something with it other than just use it as a backdrop for a story. I liked the main character and her friend just fine, but I thought that the climax of the plot was a little confusing and not as impactful as it was supposed to be. I think this was really good, but it could’ve been great.