Please note that I received this book via NetGalley. This did not affect my rating or review. Trigger warning: You hear about rape and at least two scenes show someone who is a kid and a teen about to be raped.
“The Red Knot” centers on an isolated town on an island in Alaska. The town has been through some devastating times and it appears they are back. A recent storm has caused some fisherman to be killed. And a local girl has gone missing. When the local detective Audra finds out that her best friend has been killed and her daughter taken, she is determined to figure out what is going on. She thinks that one of her best friend’s clients, is the murderer which leads her back to a woman named Valorie who seems to be going in and out of fugue states and has terror of a red knot and a noise that only she can hear.
I don’t really know what to say here. I think that if the last 20 percent of the book had been the majority of the book I would have loved this more. Instead, this one was all over the place. We had way too many POVs and then we were in so many different timelines it was hard to track. And even though the last 20 percent finally got the book moving, the ending wasn’t that great.
The character of Audra was aggravating. I loved that her main thing is that she didn’t feel like her mother loved her, but isn’t showing up great in the mom department with regards to her daughter Wren. I also thought we got way too many things spewed at us about her, her marriage, her current relationship. I don’t know what was going on after a while. It felt like she was attracted to everyone and no one at the same time. I just wanted to read this mystery/horror novel and not feel like Audra was the world’s dumbest detective who kept lashing out at everyone.
Valorie. Sigh. There was too much happening with this character. I had a hard time keeping track of what was real and not real and then of course after you get to the reveals you can go back and see what was real now based on what is known to you as a reader, but I honestly didn’t have the energy. I think the constant timelines following her where just too much after a while.
In addition, I have to say the ending left me feeling unsatisfied. Not everything that went on in the past and even in the present was fully addressed. For example, there were gaping holes on what happened to certain people. I also want to know what happened to the town, how is everyone going on about life? Etc.
I read this for CBR17bingo, I am going to use the “Free” square and swap it in for the citizen square.