It hurts to write this but WTF? I had seen that this was a divisive conclusion to this series, and those comments were not wrong. There’s no denying that this story had me on the edge of my seat – Holly Jackson has a fantastic way of conveying the characters & the struggles they are going through, the tension of the situations they are in, and even day to day life. It’s just that choices were made & I didn’t like them.
I had a lot of admiration for Pip in the first two books. She uncovered the truth in cases from her home town & I thought that she had generally acted with integrity. You could see her coming off the rails a little at the end of the second book, but I had hoped that with some time & perspective, she could come to terms with what had happened. However, Pip’s still dealing with the traumatic events, and I really struggled reading this. I think it’s an indication of the skill of the author – I really felt like I was right there with Pip when she could feel the blood on her hands, so even though I found it hard to read, I thought it was well done.
The second half of the story introduced a Pip I never thought we would meet. I felt that this was such a radical departure from the character that we had gotten to know & love, and I almost stopped reading the book. Despite the fact that I had to keep reading because I had to know what was going to happen, I’m so disappointed that this series ended the way it did. I thought it did a disservice to all the character building from the previous books.
