‘The Reappearance of Rachel Price’ was a Flop

    The Reappearance of Rachel Price  is about a girl named Annabel Price (Bel) who has grown up without a mother, because hers  simply disappeared when she was younger. In the middle of shooting a documentary about the disappearance of Rachel Price, Rachel shows up with a suspicious story about her disappearance and return. 

    I think the initial premise of the book could have been very intriguing if the execution was better. This was a very slow thriller; it felt like the first 70% of the book was just filler. It’s almost 500 pages long, and it was really dragged out in my opinion. Could have cut 100 pages or something. The action only really stated 70% in and it wasn’t entertaining. 

    The writing was just okay. Not sure why Jackson had this 18 old main character narrate some of the worst lines I’ve ever seen in a thriller. She was acting the way I acted in 4th grade when I discovered what swearing was. It just felt super immature. A few examples are when another character, Ash, gave Bel a thumbs up and she thought “He could shove those fingers up his—“. Like, he’s just being nice… Or when she said “Come to justice, is that what he says to his wife in bed?” .  There’s also the insane amount of unneeded F bombs in this; chill, we get it, you’re all grown up and you’re allowed to swear, hahaha! I also found the writing super repetitive; I feel like on every page there was an “A-B-B-Be-Bel” (Rachel isn’t used to calling Bel ‘Bel’ so she is always stuttering over her name. This was the most annoying part).

    In a thriller or murder mystery, it’ important to have one lovable character so the reader cares whether or not a character is hurt, you know? But in this, there wasn’t one character I was actually rooting for other than a side character who didn’t actually show up much. Bel could die and I’d just be blank faced. She was so annoying and such a bitch to everyone for no apparent reason. Bel was kind of dumb too; in the beginning she is super against Rachel and her story, she picks it apart and is very suspicious of little mistakes that don’t seem to matter much. Later in the book, I start piecing things together, everything starts looking a bit suspicious to me too. Then Bel just decides she doesn’t think Rachel actually didn’t do anything, out of no where. 

     The plot twist was really predictable and didn’t really wow me the way I’d want ‘the reveal’ in a mystery  book to do.  The crazy amount of filler I endured was not worth this crappy twist. 

     I really hated the ending; it was unrealistic and not very fulfilling. The romance was awful. It’s insane how terrible this romance was compared to romance in Jackson’s other books. I don’t want to give many explicit spoilers, so if you’d like to read my thoughts on the romance and the ending of this book, click here. 

    All in all, I wouldn’t recommend this book. It was really disappointing. I’m hoping Holly Jackson isn’t a one hit wonder with her AGGGTM trilogy (I have read her other book, Five Survive and thought very poorly of it).