Book: After Anna by Lisa Scottoline

After Anna by Lisa Scottoline
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I received a digital copy of this book via Netgalley for the purposes of providing an unbiased review.

While I did not like this book overall, there were things I did like. Caleb was an awesome kid and he rises to the occasion toward the end of the book. Wreck-It Ralph is a phenomenal name for a cat. The long-term relationship between Maggie and Kathy spans the gamut of emotion, and is a wonderful example of friendship.

Though the craptastic formatting was irritating, and I'm mentioning it, it's not included in my reasons for disliking After Anna.

The first chapter was good. I was certainly hooked enough to continue reading. The next chapter belonged to Maggie and the goddess of exclamation points, and I wasn't even to the bottom of that page before I was rolling my eyes and wanting to tape Maggie's mouth shut.

There was an instance or two early on of infodumping on the courthouse's appearance, which may be of interest to some, but I was reading, "blah, blah, blah" instead. Plenty of awkward phrasing throughout, and so many misused and improperly punctuated words - the proofreader needs to be tossed overboard.

I didn't enjoy the split reverse timeline method of storytelling. It can be done well and ratchet up the suspense, but here it was just annoying. I was at 80% before the plot became interesting again.

There was a glaring mistake in the final rescue scene, and it took me entirely too long to get back into the story for the last few pages.

I was disappointed in the epilogue: too much time was skipped over, and I felt like the characters didn't deserve the endings they got. In particular, too much was glossed over in the family's recovery for the end to be believable to me.

I can't recommend this book unless you are a hardcore Scottoline fan who must read every book.

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In addition to the above, there are some triggery scenes in he last quarter of the book. If you have triggers involving children or sex, please ask so I can help you decide if this book is for you.