The middle 30% was pretty good for a beach read. The beginning failed to introduce the characters. Hannah is pretty one-dimensional and I couldn’t figure out her career trajectory. How did she get from watching her grandfather to being featured in Architectural Digest and having repeat millionaire/billionaire clients? The only interesting thing about her was just skipped over.
Owen and Bailey were practically avatars. Not really even people. Bailey was obnoxious enough to qualify as the accepted definition of a teenager in 2022, but not obnoxious enough to be objectionable. We are told she is beautiful and special, but it’s definitely not shown. She was boring.
The story starts out with inadequate background and justification for Hannah moving across the county and marrying a guy with a kid she hasn’t known that long, but it’s not that bad. Then it gets sort of interesting and you really start to wonder where it’s going. The big mystery is Owen’s background. But it ends up being sorted out a little too quickly and in a way that relies on a very young child’s memory. Also, there wasn’t enough explanation of how Owen got away with concealing his identity and that could have been interesting. I don’t want to ruin it for anyone by giving too much away, but if you are going to lie about your background, wouldn’t you create details that people are less likely to be interested in or possibly check? Like maybe not say you went to Princeton? And why lie about the physical characteristics of a dead character? Maybe you don’t want a photos around because you are concealing their real identity, but is brown hair really going to give it away? First rule of lying is don’t lie if you don’t have to. Stay close to the truth.
Then, once the mystery is solved, it gets pretty bad. There is a lot of justification for really, really bad criminal behavior that the author tries to pass of as some sort of good and bad in everyone nonsense. And Hannah, who you really don’t care about, has to make a BIG DECISION that is tied into a whole motherhood and family thing in a very heavy-handed way.
But, honestly, the thing the bugged me the most was that a bad guy had two dogs that were supposed to be threatening and in the midst of Schutzhound training. They were Labrador retrievers. Why didn’t she also add in some cops doing a drug bust with a Maltese? Do publishing houses just not pay editors anymore or was this a laughable attempt to suggest ambiguity in the bad guy character? It was ridiculous either way, so I couldn’t tell.