(Trigger Warning: The book contains topics of sexual assault, violence, and suicide)
This review will also contain spoilers so proceed at your own risk.
After being recommended Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll and having read the glowing reviews, my expectations for this book were quite high. Forewarning, those expectations were not met.
It was difficult for me to get into this book – let me explain why. The book switched timelines and narratives inconsistently throughout the book. From when the main character was in high school to her current age as an adult. This switch occurred abruptly and took me almost halfway through the book to fully understand when a timeline jump was materializing. There was no header on the page or a break indicating the time had changed, which I believe would have been helpful.
The chapters also ended on, not exactly cliffhangers, but situations where I was finally starting to understand the characters and plot. This upset me as a reader. I was beginning to relate to the book and it instantly changed, immediately losing my interest. I am curious on whether this is a writing style of Knoll’s or if this type of writing is specific to this book.
I did appreciate the book diving into some pretty intense topics but the gore described during one scene was a little too much for me. Personally, it took me out of the setting. In the book’s defense, murder mystery is not a genre I frequent. Perhaps it just wasn’t something up my alley.
When the climax of a book approaches there are a few different types of readers. There is the speed reader who skips over words to reach the plot quicker, the slow reader who over analyzes every word, and the reader who stops to put down the book and process what is happening only to pick it back up a few hours later. When reading, I speed through like the words are going to disappear off the page if I do not reach them fast enough.
As chapter twelve approached I have never read so quickly in my life. This was when the plot finally came together and I began putting together the puzzle pieces that were spread throughout the previous pages. I did feel as if the payoff for a lot of characters arrived and a lot of my questions were answered. Many of the unfulfilled plot lines came to fruition here as well.
I am a huge fan of the trope where a minuscule detail introduced at the beginning is revealed to have great importance later on – a full circle trope. Knoll has mastered this trope. Time after time again I was surprised and impressed with how she tied different parts of the story back in. It takes extensive forethought to successfully plan the story out from the beginning all the way through the end of the book.
In the end, for me, if the pace and energy that was embodied at the end of the book were maintained throughout its entirety, this would have been a much more enjoyable read. I have no reservations about reading this book in the first place but it did reaffirm the fact that mystery is not for me. However, if mystery is a genre you enjoy, Luckiest Girl Alive may be much more enticing to you.