hello everyone! today i am going to be talking about that weekend by kara thomas. i gave this book 3/5 stars. first off, thank you so much to netgalley and delacorte press for an arc of this book! and also happy pub date to this book! but, of course, this is going to be an honest review and isn’t going to be changed by the author or publisher.
trigger warning- blood, domestic abuse, child abuse, child death, alcoholism, kidnapping, car accident, incest, suicidal thoughts, cancer.
honestly, i really liked the writing of this book. i feel like thomas did a very good job about talking about what happened before, and then going back to what happened before, and then parts were it was present day, which was just super cool. and i honestly really thought it was cool to have everything being shown instead of us being told about how they got their or whatever else happened.
with that being said, everything about this book is solid and not a mess. like, for one, i feel like Thomas really knew which twists and turns and all the speed bumps she wanted to throw into this book, and really made it amazing with that aspect. like, i feel like everything was done so seamlessly, and that it was honestly so cool. there are definitely some books, and even one of Thomas’ other books were the twists just don’t make sense and aren’t even that good, so in here, it was just done to perfection honestly.
but, i also feel the second part of this book honestly got to be a bit little to much romantic. like, for one we got this redemption arc for the guy that we were supposed to hate in the end of the book. but, also just i think it was so stupid cause i feel like we didn’t need to have this secondary romance plot and i wish it just stuck to the whole mystery / thriller plot.
i do feel though, this book did have its slower moments, like i do feel like there was parts that it was really just skim reading, since it was just shit we already got told about, or just other things that were just basic and boring. which, i feel like most mystery books do have that moment, which sucks, but it also is kind of just a basic thing in some books.
but, i do think most of this book was honestly very good and fast. i do think that it happened rather quickly and that it all worked very well. and also just how everything unfolded just worked very well and also was just engaging and worked very well. but, also there were things that were stupid and i think it could have worked better.
if you don’t know, i do read quite a few mystery thriller books, so i like to think of myself as a pro in here. so, i do feel like in here we were have steps ahead of claire in this book. granted, i feel like it might have just been me, but claire would be like, oh no who did this ?? and than the person that actually did that was right in front of her face and i felt like it would have been so easy for her to be like damn it’s them.
and also i think that there were way to many secrets in this book, and not from character x character, like character x reader. and i know that there needs to be secrets, and it honestly makes the secrets better. but, in something that will forever be burned into my brain, and i’m gonna paraphrase this here, was someone came to kat’s grandma and accused kat’s father of something, and that is all we got told. that this lady caused a scene and it went bad, so we don’t know why or how what happened till like chapters and chapters later. and than also like, we know kat’s grandma hated jesse but, like i think other people in the book knew, but they weren’t gonna tell us and i was like, just tell us already. and it’s not like a murder confession that would break the whole story, when in this case it was just gross.
but, i will say, i do feel like the research thomas did into the true crime world was just terrible. like, for one, there were just so many questions and things brought up that could have been solved if she used google or even ask a police or sheriff office, since i think some authors do and say so in their authors note. so, i feel like some of it could have been solved if they helped themselves and not just kind of half assed the whole story.
there also is this part of the novel were we get talked about how there is this mountain / lake thing, and the lake thing was like super deep and that there was all of these caves and more dangerous places to go in, which were they think kat and jesse’s bodies might be in there. granted, i don’t know how dangerous this place could have been, but, if a person go in their cause it’s to dangerous and they were like damn, we can’t search it, but if you really want to recover their bodies you could probably just scan it with a camera or something, just to give the families a piece of mind. but the police were also like we can’t search the body of the lake since it’s too deep, and it was like huh??? shouldn’t you search it cause their might be the bodies.
but, i also feel like this story wrapped up so quickly. like, i’ll go into the end of this book more in the spoiler warning, which i think was just so gross and disgusting, but i feel like this book wrapped up so quickly, like this plot twist happened, something got resolved, gross moment, and than it was the end. and i think it was just not good, and i think that it should have had wrapped up better, and maybe take the stuff about the romance taken out and all the back and forth, than wrap it up better, and not so grossly.
now for some spoilers, cause i got some thoughts and this is going to in the order it happened, to make it make the most sense-
but this book completely lost me with the romance, like, jesse’s a kat’s was a whole thing, which i’ll talk about later, but more so with the whole romance with ben and claire. so, the romance between them, we got told in the very earlier parts of this books they broke up cause he cheated, but then she goes back to town for christmas break and than they get a little ‘romantic’ on the couch, which i thought was stupid, cause once a cheater, always a cheater. and the romance honestly just slowed this book down so much, since it was so unneeded.
next thing we know, we get this whole plot about kat’s dad is a very abusive to the girls throughout this book, but mainly when she was a kid. which, i think is always a harder part of a book, since you need to do it well enough and be kind of honest about it all. but, i do feel like they brought up, but than it was resolved rather quickly. and also kat would be like, yeah my father is abusive to her grandma and to the people he worked with and they were like, oh he’s just misunderstood, which just pissed me off.
than the next part of this book we kind of get this reveal that jesse and kat and amos, her cousin, are hiding out in this cabin in the middle of the woods, not to far away from the incident. which, at this point they are all like 18-19 years old, but, i just felt like it was so unrealistic that these teenagers could go unnoticed and that nobody ever put two and two together, since it was pretty easy to figure out. and jesse’s and kat’s face was plastered everywhere, so everyone knows who they are and what they look like, so kat would make these comments about how she would go to the store or go babysit and nobody would know recognize them. which, i think is just not realistic, since if you face was everywhere for months, someone is going to be like, oh shit she is the missing girl.
so, if you read the trigger warnings, you probably say the word incest as one of the words in there, and if you follow me on twitter, bookish_r, you would probably already know this. and boy, did i never think i would read a book published in 2021 have this whole plot with incest. which, honestly just pissed me off, since i feel like having kat and jesse be half siblings was so gross. like, i think there could have been so many different ways to wrap this book up, but being like ‘hey yeah, sorry they are siblings’ was just so gross and i think it was just so gross and bad, since they were like lovers, and not even like friends or anything.
end of warning
anyway, that is all for today! i honestly wish i liked this boo, since i feel like it could have been such a better book and not so gross and more just murder mystery. but, i also didn’t really care about thomas’ other book, the cheerleaders, so i didn’t expect to love this book all that much. but, i still think it was decent, minus the incest.
r.bookish 