2.5

Started out ok but then derailed. A lightweight ok read and nothing more. Wouldn’t describe it as a thriller either.

Kindle Unlimited 16 s7 comments Dona769 111

Thank you to the author Lyn Liao Butler, publishers St. Martin's Press, and NetGalley for an advance digital copy of WHAT IS MINE. All views are mine.

Three (or more) things I loved:

1. This perspective is kind of harrowing. We experience these very stressful events, the disappearance of a child, through the eyes of a navel gazing individual.

Three (or less) things I didn't love:

This section isn't only for criticisms. It's merely for items that I felt something for other than "love" or some interpretation thereof.

1. Honestly, the timeline is hard to follow. Not because it is nonlinear, but because the author tortures the narrative to hide certain details from the reader, *instead of* utilizing her alternating timeline to do that for her. It's one of the benefits of the form, after all.

2. This storyline stigmatizes mental illness. Such a common trope, still a story ruiner for me. Tons of space devoted to the fmc as having ptsd, only to portray her later as being violently disordered and dangerous. Mentally ill people aren't just random groupings of antisocial characteristics. Mentally ill characters shouldn't appear that way either.

3. I really don't narrative twists that depend in some way on a mentally ill character's diagnoses or symptoms. It turns the character into a plot device, and a gimmicky one at that. In this book, the whole narrative could have played out in a nearly identical way without making the fmc a criminally psychotic person, you know, out of the blue and with such massive coincidence.

4. This book goes on for too long after the primary conflict resolves. It's boring because there is no reason to remain invested in these characters or problems anymore.

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