I honestly struggled to read this book. I couldn’t even get myself to look down at it as a distraction when I was on the treadmill. I just felt no connection to the characters, for at least 80% of the book.
I’ve read a couple of Slaughter books before this and found them quite enjoyable, but the pacing of PoH is all over the shop. We’re dropped into Andy’s life without consideration for the fact that just because her mother loves her, doesn’t mean a reader automatically will, unless given a reason. It’s frustrating – Laura is by FAR the more interesting character.
The book kind of knows this – it jumps back in time to when Laura was Andy’s age. But the first time it does this, there’s not enough context cues to know why we’re following another Laura who, age-wise, can’t possibly be our girl. And we haven’t spent enough time with present Laura to work out how it all connects (to preserve the surprise? Sure, but at the expense of any connection to the characters on my part!). I would have been fine with the gotcha if I’d been intrigued, but I wasn’t.
All of the Andy sections pull momentum from the story, and she just coasts aimlessly with no agency, doing what her mother told her to do. She’s superfluous and the story would have worked better without her. I’m left feeling like the only reason you actually need Andy in the story is so you CAN sell it to Hollywood – where the thinking is that nobody cares about Laura being menaced unless her young, hot daughter is there with her.
Overall a disappointing effort from a usually reliable author. I won’t be watching the adaptation; I can’t imagine the thinking behind making it in the first place!
