Well bless McFadden. She has a formula that is really working for her. That said, this one dragged because honestly I feel bad for saying this, she needed to cut down some of the sections developing the two characters of Teagan and Polly. I just kept waiting for a bad thing to happen and at one point I was like, is anyone going to die? We just playing games and whatnot? It just got boring and I was over Polly by the 3/4 mark honestly. And okay ending, but nothing too surprising here. As I said, if you have read McFadden, you know what formula she follows.
“The Crash” follows Tegan, a young 23 old woman who is pregnant with her first child. I don’t want to do spoilers here, but something upsetting happens and it causes Tegan to get on the road to visit her older brother Dennis at a sky resort he works at. Tegan though gets in a car accident (right before a snowstorm) that leaves her partially trapped in her car with a broken ankle. Tegan though gets rescued by a man named Hank who tells Tegan because of the snowstorm he has to take her back to his home and his wife, Polly is a nurse. But it quickly becomes apparent that something weird is going on with Hank and Polly. And Teagan realizes she is trapped with no way to get help.
First, Tegan. When you switch to Polly’s point of view she is acting like a brat, but hello she has a broken ankle and is confined to a basement. I liked all of the chapters starring her, her calling her baby Tuna, and her wondering about a man she met in an unconventional way. You get how desperate she is becoming quite early on in the book.
Second, Polly. I just needed McFadden to tell her story better. There is so much jumping happening in her points of view and some other characters, like a little girl that lives down the road from her and Hank named Sadie.
There are other characters in this one that did not get developed well at all such as Jackson, Simon, and Dennis. I think that’s why the ending read as off to me. We just spend most of the book with Tegan and Polly and then when you gets twists coming you just go what in the world, that was not set up at all.
Look, people love McFadden cause her books are easy to read and get through. That said, the flow was pretty bad in this one. I think we spent way too much time in Polly’s head for instance.
The setting of this house in the middle of nowhere just didn’t come together for me at all though.
The ending and twist just didn’t do it for me at all in this one.