Review: Dark and Shallow Lies

Dark and Shallow Lies by Ginny Myers Sain
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I debated how many stars to give this book, but finally settled on 3. I enjoyed the beginning, got very mad at how dumb the MC was acting about halfway through, considered DNF it, persevered through, then enjoyed the last couple of chapters.
This is the story of Grey, a teenage girl who is visiting her grandmother for the summer, as she has done every summer for years. She is excited to spend time with the friends she has in the town, but is worried and scared because her best friend Elora went missing suddenly one night several months earlier. Grey feels compelled to search for the truth about what happened to Elora, and hopefully find her "twin flame."
This book sets up a wonderfully atmospheric tiny town set on the banks of the Mississippi River whose residents seem to all have one form or another of psychic abilities. The oppressive humidity, uncanny legends, lazy fireflies, and secretive past events all combined to really draw me into the story. But after several chapters the story seemed to drag a bit. Grey spends quite a bit of her time dwelling on her friends and how strong their relationship is to each other, and yet most of those characters are not well-drawn and I had a hard time feeling a connection with them. Grey also reiterates over and over and over how she must find out what happened to Elora, and discover her secrets, and find the truth...but she spends an inordinate amount of time just hanging out with some new guy she just met. I felt no real sense of urgency from Grey about her professed obsession with trying to find Elora. Then when Grey began to jump to ridiculous conclusions based on absolutely no evidence, I got pretty fed up with her. She went around accusing people of things for no reason, and I just found myself rolling my eyes over and over. The end of the the book had a couple of twists that I did not see coming, however, and it made up--slightly--for the dragging plot and weird pacing of the middle of the book.
I am not sure if I would recommend this book or not. It had some pretty serious flaws, but the setting and atmosphere was well done. I might consider reading another book by this author.

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