The Basic Book Bitches

Review by Emily

I was able to read this title before it’s release date thanks to Netgalley. I began reading this book in JUNE 2023 and only finished in JANUARY 2024….I almost DNF this book.. But I pushed through because I was getting an advanced copy to read so I felt obligated to finish, which is never a fun way to feel while reading!

At the back of the book the author included an interview and book club questions. While reading through the interview the author mentioned that she wanted to write this book about grief and loss because she had recently lost her Mother and had experienced these emotions first hand. While that’s sad, I feel as though it caused the book to feel a bit pointless at times. So, let’s get to what this book is all about and what my thoughts on it were.

This book is told from several perspectives of people who were effected by the events of a car accident that took place on “the bridge’ ten years ago. This accident ended Phoebe’s life, but if her brother, Grant, hadn’t waited twenty-seven minutes to call for help would she have made it?

On the night of ‘the accident’ another local high school student, Wyatt, goes missing as well. The entire plot of this book revolves around discovering what these two events have in common and unraveling what happened in that twenty-seven minute span.

This book had some really interesting aspects, and some really dull and overused ones as well. The interesting aspect was that we got to see Wyatt’s perspective throughout the book, only to learn that at the end he had passed away that night. The really dull aspects are the limited character development and honestly I’ve read about more interesting characters on the back of cereal boxes. One character who bothered me in particular was Becca, who seemed to be stuck ten years ago in high school. Becca also had some really creepy behaviors.

Overall, this book was very disappointing and underwhelming for me. The plot of this book felt very implausible to me and wasn’t very interesting. The ‘mystery’ and ‘thriller’ were sorely lacking in this one. Sorry Ashley Tate and NetGalley, this one just wasn’t for me.