Book Review: Traces Of Her – Amanda Brittany

Author: Amanda Brittany
Book Name: Traces of Her
Release Date: October 25, 2019
Series: *
Order: *
Genre: Mystery/Suspense
Overall SPA: 3 Stars

Blurb: An unsolved murder.

Rose isn’t surprised anymore when her free-spirited step-sister, Willow, decides to disappear off somewhere without notice. But something feels different this time. When Willow sends her a mysterious package containing photographs of suspects in a cold case she is obsessed with solving, Rose realises she needs to find her sister before things get out of hand.

A missing girl.

With no sign of Willow to be found, Rose takes up the search for answers about the deaths that shook a small Cornish village eighteen years before. But what is the connection between Willow and the two sisters marked by tragedy?

Time is running out.

Someone knows where Willow is and what happened all those years ago. And they will do anything to stop the truth from coming out.

Can Rose find Willow and the answers she needs, before it’s too late?

Main SPA Evaluation Areas:

Characters: 3/5 Stars
Believability: 2.5/5 Stars
Personal Opinion: 3/5 Stars

If I could separate the events in this book between the current time’s events and the events that happened in the past and put them into two different books, I would have loved the book that focused on the past and probably would have DNF’d the book that focused on the present.

All of the events that focused on the past and Ava’s character, were great. That whole storyline was interesting and I was really invested in seeing how it all played out. Unfortunately there wasn’t nearly enough events from the past to balance out the fact that I had to do an awful lot of ignoring the events from the present to keep momentum going.

I struggled with how much I disliked Rose and her daughter, Becky, because they both fall solidly into that Too Stupid To Live category. Besides that fact, there is this really weird back and forth as to which one of the characters is the more mature one of the two. Considering Becky is in her mid-teens, that isn’t a good thing.

There were so many times where I got frustrated by how much Rose let Becky get away with, at her age, especially under the circumstances they were in. Becky even being there in the first place made absolutely zero sense from a parental standpoint and bothered me the entire way through the story. I cannot think of a single, decent parent that would think it was okay to drag their mid-teen daughter 5 hours from home to help look for a potential killer. Everything about that whole part of the plot kept yanking me out of the story because it seemed so ridiculous.

When you finally get to weave the past events together with the present events, things get a little crazy and over the top with how it all plays out. On the one hand, I didn’t entirely see it coming, though there were hints. On the other, it breaks a lot of believability barriers. When you combine that with how little I enjoyed the present events because of the characters, this falls down into the okay range for me.

*I received a copy of this book from NetGalley. Opinions stated are honest and my own.