Shadowlands by Kate Brian
My rating: 3/5 cats
so. apparently, when you are being stalked by a relentless serial killer, and have to become part of the witness protection program, this is the procedure: first your house is surrounded by a million cop cars for a little over a week, just to call a whole lot of attention to you and your family, trapping you inside while detectives and fbi people mill all over the place waiting for the killer to strike again so they can hopefully stop him before your blood gets all over the carpet. and when somehow he manages to sneak in and leave a note on your pillow despite all the police presence, the best way to ensure your safety is to hand you a folder with your new identities, walk you out through all the flashing lights and send you off on your merry way in an suv with a gps telling you where you are going to be living now. no police escort, just a “buh-bye, target family!” wave while the millions of law enforcement peeps hang out at your old house and drink all your coffee and wonder if you are any good at following directions and if maybe a less COMPLETELY VULNERABLE exit would make more sense when, you know, there is a serial killer who has killed fourteen girls in ten states over the last decade, who is too clever to be caught, trying to make you lucky number fifteen.
oh, and these are wicked comforting parting words:
“He’s never failed to finish a job before. Only one other victim escaped from him, and two weeks later he broke into her house and killed her entire family.”
drive safely, now!
worst witness protection plan ever.
and that’s basically this book. it is a fun read, but the minute you stop to think about it, you are going to run into problems. the characters do not behave the way people would logically behave in the aftermath of attempted murder. which is fine, it’s a book; i don’t require strict vérité from my YA fiction, and the last-page veil-lift could, if you are feeling generous, account for the disconnects in common sense.
so don’t stop to think. do not, under any circumstances spend one moment thinking about how the serial killer’s POV works when we are given what we are given. do not try to figure out the final scooby-doo layering of clues where a leads to b and adventure takes us to c where action will occur. convenience is as convenience does, and this is just the first part of something, although i am scratching my head with wondering why there needs to be more, when this seems pretty self-contained.
do not try to understand the motivation of a character who, within the span of a couple of pages, will have two conversations:
“Do you really want to know?”
“Yes,” I said, pitching my voice low like his. “I really want to know.”
“No,” he said with a frustrated shake of his head. “No. You need to think about it for a second, Rory. Look at me. Look at me and tell me. Do you really want to know?”
and then, two pages later, with an altogether different character,
“Rory, if you want to know anything…if you have any questions at all…you come see me, okay?” He leaned back to look me in the eye, and for the first time the superior glint was gone. He was all sincerity. My heart thumped in surprise. “Anything at all,” he said. “Got it?”
and then… crickets. because although she has spent the past 265 pages trying to figure out what the deal is with her new home and why everyone seems so fascinated with her with the staring and the following her and all but ignoring her usually much more popular hottie older sister and where people keep disappearing to and what is going on with the fog and the half-heard conversations and the meaningful glances, suddenly, what, she decides she doesn’t much care to know after all? whatever, just go with the flow. it’s like how on the teevee dramas, there will be a dramatic scene between two characters that abruptly cuts to a different scene, and you are all, “but what happens next? how do these two characters walk away from each other after having said/done that?? shouldn’t there be another scene here that shows that transition?” but no, because that is not dramatic. drama is the purposeless drawing out of a mystery that a couple hundred pages ago could have been solved with like two pointed questions.
but that wouldn’t be any fun, would it?
my advice?
read this in one sitting.
enjoy it.
give your critical faculties a rest.
