It starts off where Andie is standing at a press conference where her politician father is taking a leave of absence while some financial irregularities in his office are investigated. Good, I thought. This should be interesting.
Then there’s a whole bunch of Character Soup, where we’re introduced to a bunch of Andie’s friends really quickly without much in the way of character development.
Then Andie gets kicked off the pre-med course she wanted to do because of the scandal surrounding her dad. Okay, I thought. This is better.
Then literally the next three hundred pages were light, fluffy filler with very little in the way of Stuff Actually Happening.
It was a shame because I know Morgan Matson is capable of great things. I’m never going to hate a book of hers, but this needed a bit more bite to it to keep the pages turning.
Gradually (very gradually), the pace picked up until the last third of the book where it was all thriller, no filler. I really enjoyed the last third and rattled through it in an afternoon, but by god it was hard work to get to that stage.
The romance between Andie and Clark was okay, in a kind of meet-cute, some-kind-of-misunderstanding way. Complete rom-com stuff, but nice enough. I have a question, though: do none of Morgan Matson’s protagonists ever have sex? I don’t think they do, and while I’m sure some authors have objections to sex before marriage and that’s fine if that’s their opinion, it’s not exactly representative of real life.
This was an okay book for a beach read or if you’ve got a long plane journey, but that’s about it.
2 stars for the first two-thirds of the book.
4 stars for the last third.
3 stars overall