I’ll cut right to the chase. I abandoned this book on page 176, because the dog went missing, presumed dead-as-message to the protagonist. This book has the honour of being the first book all year that I didn’t finish.
I read a lot; I watch a lot of tv. I do not require a happy ending. I don’t need the author to coddle me or run an Entourage-style universe where there are no stakes and everything always works out in the end. However, you’d better have a solid set of characters that make my emotional investment worth it, and a plot that is actually worth my time, if you plan to imperil the pet.
I can actually see where this could be an interesting story – two generations of kids partying in the same beachside cave, missing people, a skeleton, and some promising exploration of the changing attitudes towards indigenous people and spaces. However, the execution failed for me. The protagonist didn’t connect – I found her thin, reduced to a pair of soapbox issues (with which I agree!), and a (realistically teenage?) propensity to be irritating about them, while her twin… has a stomach ache that keeps him home from school. That’s it. Picked up nothing else about him in 176 pages.
I’m sorry to (very belatedly) start my CBR 14 off with something negative, but I promise, the rest of them will be better!