“The person who could be truly alone, in the company of no one but oneself and one’s own thoughts—that person was stronger than anyone else. More ready. More prepared.”
Hi, I was promised a "atmospheric", "thriller" with "strong female" characters and I received NONE of those things.
I reserve 1 star book reviews for books that I do not fully read. This book was poorly written, but that is the least of the issues I had with it. Around the 200 page mark I started heavily skimming so I could put this book down without regrets. I am super glad I did not waste my time by giving this a careful read.
The Sundown Motel starts with Viviane a young 20 something who leaves someplace that sounds like the midwest to head to New York because of reasons... ? She ends up working night shifts at the Sundown Motel and disappears. Years later her niece Carly, sets out to discover what happened to her aunt at the Sun Down Motel all those years ago.
So here is the thing folks, The Sundown Motel wanted to say and be a lot of things. It wanted to say something important about women. It wanted to say something about the kind of men that murder women. It wanted to be original, atmospheric and creepy. Unfortunately it did none of those things successfully. This book lacked the follow through to bring any one point to the reader's attention and as a result the story and the characters were just underdeveloped ideas that came across as two dimensional cliches. This book was a masterclass in telling the reader instead of showing the reader, and you absolutely cannot have an atmospheric book when that happens throughout the whole book.
The unoriginal story, underwhelming structure and some of the most banal dialogue I have ever read, were enough for me to be deducting the star count mentally, but the final star deduction is for these "strong" "female" "characters". If I met these girls in public I wouldn't be able to stop saying "oh wow. Bless Your Damn Heart." The author went out of her way to highlight her female character's innocent outlook on life. Naive characters are one thing, but the author took it a little too far by galloping other more "worldly" characters as a juxtaposition to condescendingly ask them things like "do you even know what that means you sweet fragile human?" She limited her characters to some of the worst female gender role cliches and then expected us to like them and root for them and call them strong?
As Ariana Grande famously sang THANK YOU, NEXT.
1/5 Stars. Not for me but maybe it's for you!
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