The Unwedding by Ally Condie * *

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The Unwedding
What a let-down! I love a good mystery and the set-up sounded great. Murders in a resort? I love it when people's holidays get ruined like that! Hotels, beaches, cruise ships, that's my favourite setting. That's pretty much the only thing I liked about it though. I ended up giving up at 43%, then looked for the solution and wanted to see if that would make me want to read the stuff in between, but it didn't. The solution just solidified my resolve to not finish this.

I'll start with my biggest issue. Ellery, the main character. We're in her head. Third person limited. I don't mind that usually, but it wasn't a pleasant head to be inside. She's going through a divorce and the guy already has a girlfriend. I could understand anger, but she's wallowing in pain like the guy wasn't an AH. Page after page of "my marriage has ended and I'm lonely" in the most melodramatic way possible. We even get the lying in bed sobbing scene. I. Don't. Want. To. Read. About. This.
Then all the flashbacks to an accident. I'm not going to spoil it here, but that takes up another big chunk of the book.
Then more of the book is "I'm missing my kids so much!" They're not toddlers. This woman has dependency issues.
People getting murdered? An afterthought for this woman.
Why did the author have to have such a whiny person as the main character, I have no idea.

Second issue is the pacing, which was all the more clear when I tried to find out the solution to the mystery. It was like pulling teeth from a mouth that had 1.000.000 teeth. It went something like:
"Ellery, tell us the solution."
"Wait, first let's talk about x!"
"So the way it happened..."
"What about y?"
Me in my head: GET TO THE POINT!!!
Meandering constantly.
Then there was a whole side stuff that was apparently a hidden issue that was just suddenly brought up and made no sense at all. If you get to it, I've actually studied real life scenarios like this and no one would hide it, because you don't have to, and I know people like that who are not hiding it precisely because they are in a position to talk about it and make a difference, be an advocate. So that was just dumb and I have no idea why that was even in there.

Anyway, if you don't mind a melodramatic main character and more side quests than Dragon Age, this is for you. Don't read it for the mystery, that was last on the author's priority list.

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