The disappearance of refined personas

This book by Holly Jackson derives its name from Rachel Price, who comes back from the dead after sixteen years of being missing, while a documentary about her disappearance is being filmed. Her return completely turns the life of the Price family upside down. It appears that there are many secrets hidden beneath the surface within the Price family, and Annabel, Rachel Price’s daughter, plans to uncover these secrets. She believes that her mother is not telling the truth about her dis- and reappearance. Together with Ash – a cameraman working on the documentary – she plans to unmask Rachel’s lies. The answers she seeks turn out to be much darker than she anticipated.

I had high expectations of Holly Jackson. I’m a huge fan of her A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder trilogy, - a genius and nerve-wrecking series which sparked my interest in all of her books. However, The Reappearance of Rachel Price did not blow me away as I expected it to. Her writing and the plot (especially the plot twist!) were amazing, but the characters were really testing my patience. The behavior of the characters did not match with the events in the book. They barely seemed to react to the traumatic experiences towards the end of the story. The main character’s behavior annoyed me the most. Throughout the whole book, she acted like an entitled, mannerless princess and I got the impression that the author tried to blame this on her trauma. Bel was convinced that her mother did not disappear, but that she purposefully abandoned Bel. Of course, I’m not surprised that this had its influences on her personality, but I thought that her behavior as a result of her abandonment issues was a little overdone. She showed no respect for the people around her and treated her friends – mainly Ash – like trash. Ash even came running back to her as an obedient little lapdog, despite the fact that Bel treated him as a useless projectile. To me, it’s obvious that she has the emotional maturity of a toddler. What’s more, is that her surroundings never fought back against her. Not once has she been held accountable for her actions (you have to read the book for examples of such actions). Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE forgave her, while Bel barely showed any regret, in most cases NONE. How can Bel’s personality develop when she never suffers the consequences of her actions? And still Holly Jackson tries to make it look like Bel grew as a person. Sorry, Holly, but this time that didn’t work out.

There are numerous other examples I can name concerning the lacking character development (while the character development was exceptional in A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder!), but I don’t want this review to contain any spoilers. I must admit that the story itself is well written, which really raised my final rating. I think the book had fun unexpected twists and was exciting. It’s not a bad book, but I would’ve spent more time on some of the characters. I’d rate it 3,5 stars.