Half Moon Bay by Alice LaPlante

Half Moon Bay by Alice LaPlante
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Jane O’Malley loses everything when her teenage daughter is killed in a senseless accident. Devastated, she makes a stab at a new life and moves from San Francisco to the tiny seaside town of Half Moon Bay. As the months go by she is able to cobble together some possibility of peace. Then children begin to disappear, and soon Jane sees her own pain reflected in all the parents in the town. She wonders if she will be able to live through the aching loss, the fear once again surrounding her, but as the disappearances continue, fingers of suspicion all begin to point at her.

Oh dear, where do I start on this one. So boring, confusing, unengaging writing style and by the time I'd reached pg 25 I had to stop before I became brain dead. Awful writing style didn't carry this one forward and confusing convoluted storyline of being inside Jane's mind was just a push too far for me. I never give a totally bad review but this was so awful that I couldn't bring myself to go beyond pg 25. Maybe it gets better, maybe it doesn't but I really couldn't have cared less what happened to the main character and although loosing a child must be one of the worst nightmares you can go through I just couldn't engage in this novel. Littered with staccato bursts of rhetoric with no real outcome or cohesion, the pace was painfully slow. Its a pity because so much could have been done with the concept but I felt it was just an exercise in self pity - as I said perhaps it gets better as you go along but I doubted it as I skim read forwards and it seemed if anything to get more convoluted and messy. So sorry to have to give it only 1 star.

I would like to thank the publisher for sending this in exchange for an honest review.