I am so glad I didn't pay money for this. Found it in a Little Free Library and picked it up because I saw that it was really popular. I don't know why it's so popular, though. I slogged through it and ended up borrowing the audiobook from the library just to try and get through it faster because it was such a chore to read.

To start off my exhaustive list of complaints, I want to talk about how flat and awkward the characters were. None of them had any depth or substance. It felt like their sole purpose of being there was to make the reader guess about the culprit. And the throw-away comments or flat out obvious statements about a "mysterious past" were so awkward in the text that it it probably would have read better without them. The way the author had squeezed those "hints" in the text didn't flow with the rest of the narrative.

The narrative barely had any flow to begin with. Everything was clunky and awkward, and there was no transition between the memories and the present. And if there ever was a transition, it was "I suddenly remembered" or "I remember when" which isn't a transition at all and it's boring, especially when the memory would begin right after with no warning and then the present time would begin again when the memory was done with no warning. It was just a new paragraph. I also didn't think the placement of the memories made much sense with the rest of what was currently going on in the book.

The author also tried to end every chapter with some kind of attempt at a suspenseful cliffhanger, but it isn't going to work because obviously Jess isn't going to get got 30 pages in to the book. Jess: "And she felt something blunt hit her shoulder blades and something sharp prick her neck." New POV to keep you "in suspense" I guess. Jess: "Haha oops, silly me it was just a cat that I didn't know my brother had."

And that sentence leads me into another major complaint. Why do we need constant reminders that Jess didn't know her brother very well. Every time someone said something specific about Ben it was always "wow I never knew that, although I didn't really know anything about my brother." We get it. Shut up.

There was also the constant reminder in the beginning every time Jess met a new neighbor that she looked nothing like Ben, but maybe only in profile. "They didn't even walk the same." No shit?? Do siblings now all share a walking style? The constant comparison between Ben and Jess from the neighbors was excessive and unnecessary and cluttered the pages in what seemed like an attempt to just make the book longer. Because I honestly couldn't tell you what other purpose writing like that served.

The reader is also constantly reminded that Jess was raised in the foster system. If it was only when she was remembering something or saying something directly to another character then it wouldn't be that big of a deal, but it was every time she thought about the neighbors' relationships or anything to do with family. It always reads as some melodramatic "*sigh* I wouldn't know anything about being a real family. I didn't have one of those." Shut up. I also didn't understand the allusions to Jess doing something horrible "and I would do it again if I had to"

but it was just stealing money and locking her manager in the bathroom.

Girl get a grip. You're not England's Most Wanted. All the build up to finding out what she did that made her run away and it wasn't even something major? Lame.

This is also one of those books filled with sexual content (nothing explicit, it's just mentioned and alluded to) for absolutely no reason. Everyone is sleeping with someone they shouldn't be, which is fine because that does happen in real life, but it's the fact that it's always randomly revealed as if the author expected it to shock us. Bro we don't care that Camille is fucking someone's ex-wife. She is so unimportant to anything that has to do with this book. But Ben? Oh everyone wanted Ben. And it was annoying. Constantly having to read about how this character and this character and this character all fell in love with Ben and how they kissed him and did this and did that. For what? What was the purpose? I don't care about romance and sex in books, but at least make it make sense and try to connect it better. Ben was one of the most Mary-Sue characters I have ever read outside of fanficiton.

The ending was also really stupid. I can't even collect my thoughts enough to describe it any other way. All of that, for it to end like that? Waste of 356 pages.

Switching to the audiobook didn't make this book any more palatable. If anything, it probably made it worse. The narrators sucked. There was no emotion in their voices and they all talked super slow. I had to speed the audiobook up to 1.75 just to tolerate their voices. It was also even more difficult to follow along with the memories and the present switching because of how jumbled everything was. There was no indicator to signal to the reader that it was a memory until they mentioned Ben responding, and then you're left there wondering how much of what you just listened to was a memory. And because the narrators all read with the same flat intonation, they themselves weren't any help in figuring it out, either. It's a good thing I had the physical copy on hand to go back and check without having to rewind anything, but people listening to just the audio don't have that luxury.

I'm going to end this with just two more complaints. And one of them is an extremely personal opinion. But British people really need to come up with another word for fancy because the amount of times something was described as "posh" make me want to throw up. Do you not have any other descriptors?

On top of all of that, this entire book was predictable. It seemed like the author ended it the way she did specifically to try and throw the reader off or have it be a little twist, but it didn't work. It was extremely messy and rushed and fit in just as well as everything else in this book did, which was not at all.

Do not recommend. I only finished it because it was for my book club, or else I would have DNF'd less than 100 pages in.