In the first place, if you are going to do a book about a school shooting, it's a great idea to actually set the stage for your characters. Describe what happened, put some detail into it (not gory death details, but the event, the feelings, the experience from the victim and/or the shooter's viewpoint).
Holmes starts the book with one of the main characters, Jenn, drowning in her grief. Throughout the book, the portrayal of Jenn is inconsistent. Is she an alcoholic? I don't know. Nothing is mentioned about it until midway through the book and I have no idea how much she drank before her son died (her son never felt like a real person, that I actually cared about). Does she want the school shut down? She changes her mind about that a few times. Is her marriage in trouble? One conversation at the beach with some other lower class townspeople instantly changes her feelings about everything, she is suddenly ready to let go of her anger and grief and move forward for ice cream with her husband and daughter.
I know that I was supposed to feel for Jenn, but honestly, I just found her unsympathetic and annoying. I felt like the book kept setting her husband, Robert, up to have a deep, dark secret that never materialized. It seemed like he was harboring a hidden agenda when he began spending time with Jenn, taking the day off to go to the cemetery, suddenly discussing how much he missed his son. But in the end, it was apparently not motivated by anything. And I mean anything. I never got the idea that he cared very much about his son or his marriage.
The town mayor, Charlotte, apparently loves her town more than anything - she want to fix everyone and pretend like the shooting never happened. She also wants everyone to rally around the shooter's mom, who is currently having her house vandalized and facing eviction. But between running the town and everyone's lives, she notices her husband, Jordan, doesn't seem to be basking in his town hero status. Honestly, I had figured out the big plot twist by the middle of the book, but what is truly amazing, is that I didn't care.
On the last page, the "bomb" is dropped that Jordan is "Gabe's absentee father". Ooookaayyy....lots of kids have absentee fathers, they don't suddenly go shoot up a bunch of little kids over it. It just didn't make sense. There was no detail on why the shooter's mother, Julia, would move herself and her son to the small town where his father lived, why this wonderful citizen would have denied his own child, how the details of his parentage were revealed and why it made him so murderous.
Although this book had great promise, it seemed like the author didn't do enough to tie the story together and she didn't give the kind of details and storytelling that make you care about the characters.
I can only give it 2/5 stars. Boo.
I was given an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
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