Holly

Qualifying note: I did listen to this instead of reading it. Not that I think that makes any real difference in this case but alas.

This book is AWFUL. There are a gazillion mentions of masks and covid and two seconds spent on plot. There are somehow no meaningful storylines going on and too many storylines going on. It is an absolute mess and holly is a terrible detective. She is consistently infuriating and hypocritical. I never read the previous books so I didn't have any real background on her before but my god she was insufferable. She would never shut up about covid yet was seemingly perfectly fine staying in motel after motel without any stress. The ending of this book really encapsulates all of her problems with the fact that she repeatedly claims to know better and to not “hide behind the chainsaws” yet she does so the moment the opportunity presents itself. Even if you were concerned about not telling anybody before hand in case you were wrong and looked stupid set up a god damn scheduled send email in case something goes wrong and even you are wrong you can still stop the send before it goes out. She is just incredibly stupid and incredibly lucky and the book tries to paint her as some kind of genius detective. I wont even get into the whole shit with barbara and her stupid poetry side plot. Literally only in the book so she can somehow piece the story together and go save holly when holly is dumb enough to get herself caught. If holly had any brain cells she would not have been caught and barbaras story would not be needed which takes up an insane amount of the ending of the book. Now for actual plot the story starts off exciting and mysterious but reveals WAY too early what the harrises were up to with their whole cannibal shit. Which just made the rest of the book dragggggg not to mention the whole notion of eating the young to regain youth is not particularly original or clever. I could not recommend this book less. Never read it. Ever.