Review: How to Disappear

 

This is going to be another review where I am going to express how the blurb for this book promised one thing, but something else completely different was delivered.

When the story starts, our MC, Nicolette, is already on the run trying to disappear. She is running from hit men that want to kill her because she is accused of killing someone. Nicolette is the average girl next door so how could she have killed someone? In comes Jack. Jack is pulled in to find and “deal with” Nicolette before anyone else. That goes against everything Jack is – he is a straight A 18 year old student about to graduate high school and go off to college. He has his entire life ahead of him but his family and family history has other plans for him. Jack’s brother is in prison and he is the one that tasks Jack with eliminating Nicolete, or everyone Jack loves will pay. Not wanting to lose the few loved ones he has left, Jack sets out to locate Nicolette, but who he finds is not who he was expecting. They both quickly discover who they are and that they are both carrying some dark secrets that deserve to be brought to light and by doing so, both could be right a lot of wrongs.

Now that synopsis sounds pretty good, right? Well, that is not what you are going to get when you read the story. I almost DNFd this book I cannot tell you how many times. The characters separate were ok, but together they were such a hot mess and not in a good way. Nicolette runs away from home but somehow has the smarts and knowhow to basically drop off of the radar. Uh, ok. She keeps saying over and over and over again how she is accused of killing someone but there are never, ever any more details given than that. That’s it! Not until the last few pages of the book do you find out what happened. The writer could have at least given little hints throughout the story but that never happened. Jack’s character was a disaster. He seemed to magically have the right smarts to track Nicolette down in the middle of nowhere America when professional killers couldn’t? That was too convenient.

Here is one of the main reasons I almost DNFd the book: Insta. Love. You read that right, everyone! These two characters instantly fell for each other when they meet! Jack knew she was apparently a killer and Nicolette thought he was a cute boy that liked her. So why not start shacking up and getting hot & heavy with each other? OH, also they planned to run away together because Jack changed his mind and wanted to protect her. groan After one conversation, Jack decides that Nicolette is someone worth protecting and choses to help her. I hope you heard my eyeroll on that one.

The pacing of this story was all over the place. It felt like an incredibly long story where nothing was really happening. Both characters did an awful lot of stuff but they never got anywhere. It felt like I was watching a hamster in a wheel. Nothing truly happened until the end of the book when all of the action was crammed into the last two chapters. Then it was all very quickly “resolved” and everyone was happy. I don’t know about you, but I do not like it when stories end that way. It irritated me and I actually kicked myself for not DNFing this book. I struggled to give this story 2.5 stars because I’m not sure it deserved that many.