Title: Before He Vanished
Author: Debra Webb
Series: Winchester, Tennessee #6
Great mystery, irritating characters
Thank you to Lisa Wray for inviting me to participate in Harlequin blog tours, and thank you to Debra Webb, Harlequin, and Netgalley for allowing me to read a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.
I see Debra Webb’s name often, but I think this is the first time I’ve read one of her books. As with Allison Brennan, I just never got around to it; but then I was invited to participate in the blog tour and decided it was the perfect opportunity to give her a try.
Unfortunately, I was not overly impressed. Maybe this was just a bad book to start with? Hopefully?
The only thing that I enjoyed about this book was the mystery. It earned that third star all by itself. I tried to put the clues together in my mind as I read, but for the life of me, I could not figure out what was going on. It was really, really nice to read a mystery I couldn’t predict. It’s almost like that was the only element of the story that Webb put effort into crafting.
I didn’t hate Halle and Liam, but I didn’t like them much, either. Liam was in denial too long and I grew exasperated with him. It’s realistic to doubt you could play a role in such a bizarre situation, I understand that, but there came a point when there was simply too much evidence to deny. Yet he refused to admit that it was even possible he was the lost boy. He was like a child sitting with his arms crossed and a mutinous pout on his face, having gotten to the point in an argument where he says no just to be contrary and irritating.
I almost kinda liked Halle—until she opened the door to Burke. It was an unbelievably STUPID move on her part, uncharacteristically so, and it was obvious the only reason she didn’t treat him with more wariness was to move the plot along to the climax. If she’d been smart about it, the end wouldn’t have been as easily staged.
There was also something about the writing that bothered me, both exposition and dialogue. It didn’t seem to flow. Didn’t feel natural. I’m not sure how else to describe it. It wasn’t disjointed or overly formal, just rather passionless. Businesslike, perhaps. Like Webb wrote the story because she was contracted to, not because she cared about it.
Somewhat related to that point—Halle and Liam’s romance was nonexistent. There was almost no sign of it in the first half, and in the second it was shoehorned in like Webb had nearly forgotten it was supposed to be a romance novel, not a mystery. I felt no passion between Halle and Liam. They had zero chemistry. The night they had sex was completely unearned, and watching them get married in the epilogue made me cringe. It felt mechanical, like boxes were being checked off.
I’ll give Webb the benefit of the doubt and read another of her books someday, but it’s definitely not very high on my priority list.
