Kristin's Reviews > She's Not Sorry

What the heck was this?

First of all, I understand an ARC isn't going to be perfect and there will be errors throughout. That's fine. But there were zero page breaks in the formatting, which made it really confusing to figure out timelines. You'd be reading a scene and then the next paragraph is a new day, new location. It was jarring and unexpected because it threw me for a loop and I had to go back and see if I missed something, only to determine there was probably a page break that never got formatted.

Here's where this book went wrong for me. Possible spoilers will be tagged.
- Too many things going on at once. I kind of went in blind (read the synopsis forever ago but forgot what it was about by the time I got the ARC) so most of this book was a surprise. Was it about her divorce? The man assaulting women throughout her city? The gal in the ICU? Her friend that came back into her life? The Beckett family who seemed to have a ton of secrets, including the brother who was def hiding something? I feel like if she focused on one or two of these things, it would have worked. Not all of them.
- The pacing. Holy shit this was rough. It was so slow. I had no interest in any of the characters, including the main one, Meghan. She seemed kind of...dumb? I can't place my finger on it. But she wasn't too bright. It's hard to continue a book when you don't give a damn about anyone or anything. I think 65% if finally felt like things were "picking up."
- Mary spent wayyyyyyy too much time describing where Meghan lived. Listen, I don't need to know street signs and landmarks. I don't need to know--as she's chasing characters down the road--what the air felt like and how the trees smelled or the way the buildings looked in the shadows of the afternoon. I'm being harsh. But I skimmed PAGES (maybe a single page if we aren't talking paperback as opposed to my Kindle setting) of random crap and info you don't need to know about in this story. Like apartment layouts and hospital info that gave nothing to the story but filler.
- One "twist" was so freaking obvious, I was like wait a sec. (view spoiler)[Luke, her friendly co-worker at the hospital, is the dude assaulting and raping women? I thought this was common knowledge, something we all knew from the first page. Just kidding, it was revealed at the end in this dramatic "I have your daughter, come get her in this unfurnished house if you ever want to see her again," finale that felt like this was actually the plot all along, not the roughed up gal in the ICU. (hide spoiler)] I feel like she got her twists confused and wanted to have too many that ultimately didn't work. You also need to create more red herrings if you want to play out one that she used in the book.

Another thing: (view spoiler)[The first chapter/prologue is basically Meghan finding out her daughter is kidnapped and then leaves it on a cliffhanger for you to find out how it got to that point. ONLY TO FIND OUT IT WAS ALL A SCAM? Some AI voice generated ransom and her daughter was completely fine. LIKE WHAT? (hide spoiler)] That was lazy writing and honestly, I was really pissed.

Also Meghan just DROPPING THIS BOMB on her friend and confessing(view spoiler)[her daughter is actually the result of a one-night stand, not her ex-husband's child. WHY WOULD YOU TELL AN OLD FRIEND THAT? Someone you haven't seen in decades, who you still barely know, just because she decided to tell you a secret? I was so mad. I was like come the f*ck on. Her actions were stupid, like horror-movie-dumb girl-running-straight-for-the-killer-stupid. (hide spoiler)]

What else? I don't know. This just didn't feel like her writing. To compare this to The Other Mrs. is blasphemy. Those are two different worlds, two different books. I gave Mrs. five stars. Loved that book.

Oh also: (view spoiler)[HER DAUGHTER SENDING HER HATE MAIL? Like...I just questioned everyone's motive in this book. That was so stupid. It was added in as a way to throw us off or keep us wondering, when in reality, that didn't seem like something her daughter would do. Also, we get it, your daughter is gorgeous. We heard it like 20 times. And she wanted to potentially kill her mom and lock her in the basement all because of this secret? Like guuuurl, are you also Caitlin? Did I miss this? Was she implying her daughter would also turn psycho? (hide spoiler)]

Okay and one more thing: (view spoiler)[ I need to go back and see how and why it was able to work that Caitlin, the dying gal in the ICU, was actually her "friend" Nat. Basically, one timeline was actually split in two, a before and after. I don't know how she got that to work, because when it was revealed, I was like wait no, this doesn't make sense. So I might need to go back because I hate when we're in the mind of the MC but they're purposely reacting differently for the sake of a twist. That's not fair, it's cheap, it's lazy. (hide spoiler)]

No, promise last thing: (view spoiler)[Nat/Caitlin basically got revenge on Meghan because............she is the ex-wife of the dude she's dating. That's it. She hatched this huge plan to ruin her life, take $10,000 from the random ransom of her daughter, all because she found an old photo of the married couple back in the day hidden away in a sock drawer. We're told from another outside character that Caitlin is basically an evil whore/bitch/terrible person because she ruined his life BECAUSE HE FIRED HER FOR STEALING. Like wow, insignificant reasons to absolutely annihilate someone's life, but okay. She's "psycho" and deserved to die. But it felt all too small. I wish we got more backstory instead of "if Caitlin's mom said she couldn't get a Barbie doll, she'd call 911 and claim we were beating the shit out of her" type excuses. Just lazy. LAZYYYYY! (hide spoiler)]

I don't know about this one. If you love Mary's books, you'll love this one. If you're on the fence and always rating maybe 3 stars or less, you might not like this one. Skip it. Or read it, come back and read my review, and let me know what you think. Am I crazy? Too harsh? Probably. But this one really fired me up.