My Review of "No One Saw Her Go"
No One Saw Her Go by Sally Royer-Derr
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This was... a book I read.
I have more bad than good to say about this book, so let's just jump right in.
The forced romance in the book is just unneeded. I am okay with romance, but what I am not okay with, is the unhealthy romances that are touted throughout books. Zoey is way to hung up on a guy she dated for less than a year. Yes, some people meet their soulmates and know right away, but when you're young everyone you date feels like your soulmate. Months after she is dumped and ghosted, she is a little baby about it. I get being hurt about a break up, but SHUT UP ABOUT IT! Every other thought she has through the whole book is about Craig! Then there is Heather and Dean, not as unhealthy but just as insufferable. The puppy love was cute at first but when every single paragraph is "I love him so so much!" It gets annoying. I got it the first time.
I am also tired of there being no boundaries with questioning other people. I get that she went to the camp to learn about what happened to her aunt Heather, but harassing anyone who might talk to you, is the worst way to go about it. She keeps harping on how good an investigator she will be because she was a criminology major but then doesn't follow the basics of investigating?? If someone says "I don't know this person." Stop asking then 20 times in the same conversation! They will get upset, and reasonably so, it isn't the "gotcha" moment that she thought it was.
I also hated how when Wynn was hitting on her, it was not her first thought to be like "ummm absolutely not, he's a CHILD." But instead it was that he was a little weirdo, and like the 3rd reason was that he was a literal child.
On that same note, the over the top cop talk, that doesn't actually mean anything. She is such a body language expert, but when her "skills" are put to the test, the subject has the most obvious tells imaginable. A child could have lied more convincingly!
The Repetition was also killing me, I felt like I was reading the same sentence over and over. Heather used the phrase "family camp" at least 3 times in the span of half a page. I understood it the first time, thanks! Then you have Zoey with Craig. Did you know she was in love with him? Did you know he broke up with her over text? Did you know they were a real and serious end-game couple of 7 months? Did you know that???? Don't you worry, because the author will not ever let you forget it!
Then there is the entirely of her "investigation." She uncovers nothing, like bare bones of nothing. What she does do, is piss everyone off! Asking the same question 50 times and getting the some variation of "I have no idea" is not as much of a lead as she wants you to believe. Yet everyone is trying to kill her for asking questions she isn't getting answers to?? But then she actually gets somewhere when she talks to Mel's grandma, but it is in the laziest way possible. Her grandma mistakes her for Heather and says (this is a direct quote) "Well, I guess if you're going to haunt me, you want all the details." Huh??? If she was actually Heather, then she would already know the details. This is just lazy exposition to move the story along and make it seem like Zoey is halfway decent at investigating. But that is not the end of the lazy exposition, we get the villain monologue from Ed about how much a big bad scary man he is. He just details his crimes to Heather for no reason. He doesn't explain what he is going to do to her, or what he explicitly did to the other girls, he just goes "I'm a big bad monster, ooo you better be scared" and then kills her. I am quaking in my little bitty boots over here, Ed.
I think I am just over the absurd coincidences in thrillers/mysteries as of late. I get that life is often stranger than fiction, and that it is a saying for a reason, but I am tired of trying to pass off massive coincidences or convoluted story lines as reasonable. Her aunt was killed at the camp, so she goes to investigate, but then we find out that her boyfriend was also coincidently killed by one of the members of the family that owns the camp??? Yeah, miss me with that. Most lack luster way for her to get closure on her failed relationship
Overall, did not enjoy. The writing was pedestrian, too repetitive, and relied WAY too much on useless exposition while making the main character unnecessary to the story. I would not recommend.
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