Owen Pick’s life is falling apart. In his thirties, a virgin, and living in his aunt’s spare bedroom, he has just been suspended from his job as a geography teacher after accusations of sexual misconduct, which he strongly denies. Searching for professional advice online, he is inadvertently sucked into the dark world of incel—involuntary celibate—forums, where he meets the charismatic, mysterious, and sinister Bryn. Across the street from Owen lives the Fours family, headed by mom Cate, a physiotherapist, and dad Roan, a child psychologist. But the Fours family have a bad feeling about their neighbor Owen. He’s a bit creepy and their teenaged daughter swears he followed her home from the train station one night. Meanwhile, young Saffyre Maddox spent three years as a patient of Roan Fours. Feeling abandoned when their therapy ends, she searches for other ways to maintain her connection with him, following him in the shadows and learning more than she wanted to know about Roan and his family. Then, on Valentine’s night, Saffyre Maddox disappears—and the last person to see her alive is Owen Pick.I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
I have read a few Lisa Jewell books before and I really enjoyed them. But something about this one was just meh. A seventeen year old girl, Saffyre, is missing. She has connections to Roan, her previous psychologist and Owen, Roan's next door neighbor. The book has three POV's: Saffyre, Owen and Cate (Roan's wife). Cate and Owen's POVs are told through third person, but it's told in present tense (basically, real time). Something about this writing style just turned me off and it made it hard to connect fully with the characters. Saffyre's POV is told in the first person and there is a different timeline. The difference in voices and timelines was a little jarring.
I liked the concept of the missing girl, as well as the incel community. The problem was that the issue with the incel community was never fully developed. It was just . . . there. Mainly, it was used as a way to cast doubt on Owen. I didn't think there was a lot of suspense regarding Saffyre's disappearance either. While I was interested enough to keep reading to find out what happened, there were many periods of the story where I was just kind of bored. There were also a lot of other subplots and so much happening with the story that I didn't feel that any one part of the story really got the attention that it deserved. The end of the book was a bit much. There was so much that happened at the climax of the book and a lot of it came out of nowhere and I didn't feel fully satisfied with the ending. What happened to Saffyre was alluded to throughout so much of the story and yet it wasn't as dramatic as it should have been, given all the references to it. I also thought that the changes with Owen were too sudden and unrealistic for the character. I did actually guess one of the twists, but the surprises were things that just came out of nowhere and didn't really make sense in the grand scheme of things.
This may just be a case of "it's not you, it's me" since the book does get rave reviews from other readers. In my opinion, I think the premise of this one had a lot of potential, but the author just couldn't quite make it work.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
