Jannali Jones

Representation: First Australian main character, side Asian character
Trigger warnings: Blood, grief and loss depiction, car crash, PTSD, physical injury, racism, near-death experience
Score: Seven points out of ten.
This review can also be found on The StoryGraph.

I saw this in one of the two libraries I regularly go to, so not long after, I picked this one and finally read it. Did I mention the novel was a ride, but it is not without flaws? The last crime novel I read was The Inheritance Games, and I enjoyed that, but this had a rating below four stars, and it's more obscure since it's an Australian novel, but at least it has representation. It starts with the main character, Kaya Lamb, or Kaya for short, and she wants to go to Europe to meet her friend when she finishes school, but at midnight, her mother wakes her up and tells her she must go somewhere, but why? The beginning was suspenseful when there was a car crash, but afterwards, the book slowed down from that point onwards. Kaya is hiding from the police since her father's on trial for a crime. However, the book doesn't give me any information due to what I can best describe as an unreliable narrator, and as the blurb said, Kaya has memory loss from PTSD. I didn't think the characters were written well since I struggled to form any connection to them, and the middle section of the book had almost nothing happening in it. The ending was as action-packed as the beginning, and there was a plot twist I did not see coming. It would have been better if the final pages were not so abrupt. Come on.… (mere)