e-Audio, 08:51:25
Narrated by: Tamika Katon-Donegal
Release Date: June 27, 2023
Published by: Books on Tape
Read from: June 28-30, 2023
Stand-alone
Source: Library’s Libby
TW: Death, Sexual Assault,
For Readers Interested In: Paranormal, Mystery, Ghosts, YA, Sparkly CoversSutton going missing is the worst thing to happen to Casey, to their family. She’s trying to help find her sister, but Casey is furious. And she can’t tell anyone about their argument before Sutton disappeared. Everyone paints a picture of Sutton’s perfection: the popular cheerleader with an entourage of friends, a doting boyfriend, and a limitless future. But Sutton manipulated everyone around her, even stole an heirloom bracelet from Casey. People don’t look for missing Black girls–or half-Black girls–without believing there is an angel to be saved.
When Sutton reappears, Casey knows she should be relieved. Except Sutton isn’t the same. She remembers nothing about while she was gone—or anything from her old life, including how she made Casey miserable. There’s something unsettling about the way she wants to spend time with Casey, the way she hums and watches her goldfish swim for hours.
What happened to Sutton? The more Casey starts uncovering her sister’s secrets, the more questions she has. Did she really know her sister? Why is no one talking about the other girls who have gone missing in their area? And what will it take to uncover the truth?
*MY THOUGHTS*
I was so excited for this book. Maybe it’s the cover, maybe it was the synopsis…. But whatever it was, I needed this as soon as I seen it. Unfortunately it wasn’t as great as I was expecting. There were some weird things that popped up in this book and it made me question all the things……
Ok so the things that made me side eye this book………. I gotta say, I just didn’t understand why there was a need to add the slave stuff in it? It didn’t really make sense to me. Like I got that her dad was into that stuff, but everything that came up with her using it to help figure out what was going on and her grandma’s bracelet and stuff was just weird and out of place. I don’t even know what it was about. It was actually really weird to me. Like normally I’m ok with books that have some sort of social justice aspect to it vs so many people that say they don’t like it. But I only like it when it makes sense. In this one, it just doesn’t tho. I didn’t understand it and I even going back to re-read it I was like Huh? And what made it worse was the fact that that wasn’t the only questionable part. Idk it was like she was trying so hard to make this a social justice book when it didn’t need to be. It could have just been a mystery or paranormal book.
Also I didn’t like how nothing was explained. There was NO WORLD BUILDING. Yes I know it was a paranormal book set in the real world, but at the same time there was nothing about the paranormal stuff that was explained. Hell there wasn’t anything about the real world that was explained either. Like why tf would you make her so mean and then not say why besides the fact that her grandma wanted her to have a bracelet? It just made it so boring.
As a character driven reader I was so into this book because of the main character. I saw that she didn’t know her sister as well as she thought, and although the why wasn’t really explained, I liked being in her head to recognize that she didn’t know her sister as well as she thought. It really made me question other things that began popping up.
Lastly, I liked the way the mystery came up and how it was solved. I also liked the way her sister was portrayed while she was going through what she was going through. But WHYYYYYYYYYYYYY did she end it so abruptly? I HATED that ending. It was like things finally start happening, and then it was over. It really didn’t make sense. It like ended in the middle of a climax? I just didn’t get it.
Although this could have hit all the right places for me, it ultimately didn’t. I still had questions and was left wondering why in the world the author made this happen the way it did. Nothing really made sense and I have since learned to not to force it anymore.
Overall, I give this
