mikerickson reviewed Every Last Fear by Alex Finlay
Review of 'Every Last Fear' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
This was a fine book that was engaging enough to hold my interest throughout, but the wheel isn't being reinvented here. At its core you have the (frankly tragic) premise of a family dying on vacation in a foreign country before the story even begins. One of the surviving sons is in prison over a high-profile murder that occurred some years prior and the other is a college student forced to deal with the fallout and scrutiny from the press.
There are handful of characters that each get their turn at the narration in their respective chapters, but only one of them - the FBI agent assigned to the case - is outside the main family. (Coincidentally, she ended up being my favorite character and I found myself wanting to see more of her than anyone else.) What was interesting was that the narration had to skip back in time …
This was a fine book that was engaging enough to hold my interest throughout, but the wheel isn't being reinvented here. At its core you have the (frankly tragic) premise of a family dying on vacation in a foreign country before the story even begins. One of the surviving sons is in prison over a high-profile murder that occurred some years prior and the other is a college student forced to deal with the fallout and scrutiny from the press.
There are handful of characters that each get their turn at the narration in their respective chapters, but only one of them - the FBI agent assigned to the case - is outside the main family. (Coincidentally, she ended up being my favorite character and I found myself wanting to see more of her than anyone else.) What was interesting was that the narration had to skip back in time to follow the perspective of the family members that had died on their trip in order to show what had lead up to that incident, but then the next chapter would jump back forward to the present timeline to follow one of the surviving characters. At first it felt like a gimmicky narration style, but towards the end it allowed for a more bittersweet sendoff for those characters' final chapters (who, again, you knew were already dead before the story began, but knowing that it's coming doesn't make it any less sad).
My main complaints have to do with the ham-fisted pop culture references (at one point there's a discussion about Jordan Peele's movies, which I feel will make this book feel dated in just a few years) and the supporting cast of friends the college student son had that just came off more like a diversity checklist than a believable group of social misfits. The final reveal of the overarching mystery also fell a little flat to me, as it didn't feel like the main protagonist had figured everything out on their own so much as they happened to be in the right place at the right time to have the culprit spill the beans. Still, the pacing kept things moving throughout and I never got bored, and the threats that the protagonist(s?) faced felt capable and legitimate.
