Carrie Soto Is Back

3.5 stars

The reason for this was because for 2/3 of the book, it was boring as hell. And the writing on the wall for Carrie. As someone who is a fan of an unreliable narrator, I have no problem disliking characters. However, this girl was annoying as hell. Super stubborn, persistent to a fault–it makes sense. The thing that gets me was that there was no reprieve for the reader from this constant situations of Carrie “shooting herself in the foot”, because there are no other POVs or narrative shifts, like Reid's other books. There are a few newspaper articles and sport casters, but nothing like Malibu Rising or Evelyn Hugo.

Another thing I continue to be disappointed about is that Reid is a wonderful world builder. As a historical fiction/ contemporary writer, I feel like I have never seen this level happening before for a non-fantasy/ Sci-fi genre, between several ‘stand alone' novels. Are we forgetting Carrie Soto's large cameo in Malibu Rising? I was hoping to be able to hear her point of view as the reader for that in this novel. And i truly cannot wrap my head around why this isn't happening for multiple of Reid's books. Its such a missed opportunity and truly unfortunate. I really hope we get unreleased chapters at some point because this point ALONE is making me really unenthusastic about her most recent and future work. (Also, can we talk about how Daisy Jones makes a cameo as well?)

This book was riding 2 stars hard core, but ended up being 3.5 because of the last 100 pages. As someone who recently lost her father, the relationship that Carrie and Javier have is fantastic and pulled at my heart. There were several instances at the end with evens that made me relive a lot, but I appreciate the talent of Reid to be able to put such a loss into words. I also loved Beau and Nikki's characters. I think they were dynamic and expressive people, I only wish they were introduced earlier in the narrative to break up the monotony of Carrie's dialogue.