Title: It Takes a Town

Author: Aoife Clifford

Series: N/A

Dates Read: 29 – 30/07/2024

Published Date: 03 April 2024

Genre: Mystery/Crime

Pages: 352

Content Warnings (May contain spoilers)

Alcohol, Alcoholism, Body shaming, Cancer, Death, Gaslighting, Grief, Infertility, Injury/injury detail, Kidnapping, Murder, Toxic friendship.

Who is this for? Teenagers, Young Adult, Adult

This book covers:

  • A famous actress dies and there are some who believe it wasn’t as innocent as it looks
  • Follow the POV of those from the town (and outside it) to slowly unravel what really happened to Vanessa

Format/Disclosure: Library, paperback

Rating: 2.25 ⭐

Review:

I wanted to enjoy this book so much. The fact that it’s set in Australia made me so happy – so many books are set in the US or UK, so it’s always nice to have some representation. However, I just found this book.. clunky. There were FAR too many characters, and constantly changing between POVs (Especially to characters who were side characters) just seemed so unnecessary and took me out of the book. I think if we had just stayed on the POV of Frankie (Another book with my cats name in it, woohoo!), the main cop, and maybe one other person, it would have been a lot more enjoyable.

The story itself also seemed jumbled – There seemed to be so many other tidbits included that just didn’t seem very necessary (I still don’t really understand why we kept calling back to Nate and the.. protest/riot? I don’t even know?) that it just got to the point of being confusing. Another part being the ownership of various buildings and this being transferred to that person, but then that building was transferred to this person, and I’m still not sure if it was even relevant to the plot? I don’t see the story massively changing if all of that hadn’t been included. Also, Beth’s cancer.. I still don’t really understand all of that or see why that was included (Although maybe it’s because I’m not 100% sure on the timing – was that around the time Vanessa returned? Is that why?)

Overall, I’m just.. confused. I almost feel like I need to re-read it with a notebook next to me, so I can keep track of all the different characters and who they’re related to and what their backstory is/why they’re relevant to the story.

I will say – that husband is a jerk.

I decided to go back in and count just how many people/characters are mentioned and by my quick skim, it’s about 60. That’s just.. to many names to remember.