Strangers We Know

I did it. I finally did it! I forced myself to keep reading this book out of a vague interest in the mystery of the main character's chronic illness. I wanted to see if she ever discovered what it was - and whether there was any merit in my hope that this would become a supernatural thriller. I wanted to discover that Ivy was from a long line of werewolves and a secret government agency was keeping tabs on them.

But nope. This is a mundane story... albeit not one based on any semblance of reality. It begins with an FBI agent harassing a woman who was adopted as a child, informing her that she may be biologically related to a serial killer and demanding her help finding these people whose identities she doesn't even know. That's a good indicator of the bizarre, unrealistic world in which this book takes place.

Told in alternating first person POVs which somehow manage to share the exact same narrative voice despite having unique personalities, the story hops between timelines and viewpoints with very little rhyme or reason.

The main point of view - basically the main character - is Ivy Hon, the woman who was adopted as a child. She's got the self-preservation instinct of a stinging bee (which is to say, she seems not to care if her life's in danger and only cares about immediate gratification) and is only intelligent when necessary to move the plot along. I found her completely unlikable and almost impossible to empathize with, because she just plain didn't think or behave like a real person.

One of the alternate viewpoints is Samson (I think? Sam-something; I can't be bothered to make sure I remember it correctly and he has many aliases). He's a sociopathic serial killer with a very poorly and insensitively shoehorned history of molestation and abuse to ‘explain' it. His chapters read like mediocre, cringey fanfiction written by preteens trying to be edgy. I understand that it's difficult to find the balance between drama and believability when writing such a character, but choosing to do it as a first-person narrative is the equivalent of choosing Nightmare Mode. Unfortunately, the author lost that game miserably. I often skimmed - and once outright skipped - his chapters, because the second-hand embarrassment was unbearable.

The other alternate viewpoint is Tatum, Ivy's birth mother. She has all the personality of a slice of stale bread and her chapters are some of the most boring filler I have ever read. Though the intent was clearly to give insight into her life and the circumstances surrounding Ivy's adoption, it just made reading this book a tedious experience.

Then again, the first sixty or so percent of the book is also just... dull. Even when exciting plot beats occur, they're buried in so much repetitive and uninteresting stuff that they're hard to enjoy. It felt like the first six minutes of a Lifetime made-for-tv movie, stretched out for a few hours. Pacing is everything, and in this case it ruined what could have been a fun ‘turn your brain off and just go along for the ride' thriller. Lifetime movies are a guilty pleasure of mine, so I'd have enjoyed this a lot if it had proper pacing - and that's despite the absolute absurdity and lack of research in some areas.

But it doesn't. Which means that, instead of sitting on the edge of my seat and eating up the ridiculous drama like Halloween candy, I sat there sighing and rolling my eyes every time the story piled on more absurdity. And that's a shame, because the billion-and-one ‘twists' and high-stakes action in the last twenty percent or so come across like they're a novelization of one of those guilty pleasure movies I mentioned.

This book let me down. No werewolves, no logic, not a single likable POV character... And, to make matters worse, it doesn't exactly handle chronic illness or mental health well in how they're portrayed. From the stereotypical portrayal of a victim of child abuse becoming a mentally ill killer and the lack of nuance in portraying said mental illness to the moment Ivy decides to (successfully!) push away the symptoms of her chronic illness flaring up and her anxiety about it ‘for tomorrow', there's just no care taken with portraying these things. The chronic illness is clearly just there to string readers along with a mystery and the symptoms conveniently never interfere with plot points despite being hinted at time and again. Depression is overused, as well, and addiction was even shoehorned in without any care taken to properly portray it.

Oh, and did I mention there's a ‘free love' cult? Because, yeah, the author just couldn't pick one or two things. Or even one or two serial killers. She tried to do everything at once, and in the process didn't manage to make a good story.

There's potential and I can see it, but it was squandered. I wish I hadn't let the sunk cost fallacy of having chosen this as an Amazon First Reads book keep me from skipping ahead to the lackluster reveal of Ivy's illness (tacked onto a grossly saccharine and wholly unbelievable ending which abruptly ties loose ends). I really should have chucked this into the DNF pile!

A very unique and interesting concept but poorly executed.
It started off strong and really intriguing but as the book went on and as Ivy started digging through her family's secrets it became very annoying and repetitive. Also I HATED how Ivy was too trusting with strangers, I mean a serial killer is on the loose for chrissakes and she goes into a motel room with a stranger she met a few days prior.

It was assumed that Tatum's mom was a victim of the full moon killer and all the evidence to back that was very weak and almost non existent.

The author threw in various plots and it all ended up clashing in the end (not in a good way).
And in the end you end up confused with more questions than answers.