Hunting Annabelle by Wendy Heard
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Unfortunately, Hunting Annabelle wasn’t the story for me. I did not like this. It started out promising, as the author’s writing is actually quite strong, but the story, yeah, just did not do it for me.
Around the 50% mark was where it seemed to turn for me and I never got my interest back. Our protagonist, Sean Suh, is a Korean-American in his early 20s who you discover early on has some pretty strong urges to hurt and kill young women. In fact, you learn that he acted on these urges at least once in a severe enough manner to have him sentenced to a psychiatric prison. However, at the point where we meet him, he is living with his overbearing and severe mother in a different state from where he committed his crime(s).
As I mentioned, I enjoyed the beginning. It started off strong. It is revealed to you overtime the extent of Sean’s illness and resulting actions and I enjoyed the way that was slowly unfolded for us. He is very much an unreliable narrator and it is unclear early on how much of his thoughts you can actually believe as the truth.
After a certain point however it just got to be too much. Then plot twists occurred where my eyes legit almost rolled out of my head. I just didn’t buy what the author was trying to sell. It completely lost me on the story.
By the final 20% I just couldn’t. I had to push to make it through. However, just because this story wasn’t for me, in no way makes this a bad book. The author’s writing style is very fluid and easy to read. The suspense and uncertainty at the beginning definitely kept me turning the pages. If you are okay with the plot twists, this could probably be a really strong book for you. It is very violent, very messy, very over-the-top but also explores some interesting topics of identity and mental health.
There are readers for every story but unfortunately, this one just didn’t work for me. I want to thank the publisher, Harlequin – MIRA, for providing me with a copy of this book to read and review. I always appreciate the opportunity and I would read more books by Wendy Heard in the future.
**Please note, the protagonist in this has been diagnosed with schizophrenia but he doesn’t self-identify as such and I in no way can comment on how the rep was for that.