Book Review | If This Is Home by Kristine Scarrow

When her mom is diagnosed with terminal cancer, Jayce searches for her estranged father, hoping he can fix everything.

Jayce Loewen has had to take on a lot of responsibility over the years. Her single mom works two jobs and long hours, leaving Jayce in charge of her four-year-old sister most of the time. When her mom is diagnosed with cancer, Jayce decides to track down her long-absent father in the hope that he will be able to make everything okay again.

Looking for her dad was one thing, but when she actually finds him, Jayce is in for a real shock. When everything in her life seems to be going wrong, Jayce has to figure out who her family really is, and how to live with the possibility of losing the person she loves most.

Review

*I received a copy of this book through NetGalley. My review is entirely honest*

I read Kristine Scarrow's first novel Throwaway Girl and I really liked it. So when I spotted this on NetGalley, I was instantly excited. The synopsis had me hooked as well.

What this book has, are all the right ingredients to make a novel that I would love, it's just that the actual outcome wasn't what I expected it to be.

While this book was ok, it did disappoint me. The storyline sounded incredible, exactly the kind of thing I would normally read and love. Yet what I found was that it needed more fleshing out. The characters felt a little underdeveloped for me. You never really got to know anyone, not even the main character. The introduction of Kurt felt a bit odd to me too. You never really got to know his character, so it seemed like Jayce never did either. Then all of a sudden he's the only person she's got to lean on and he's always there. It felt odd to me.

My other issue with this book, was that the whole thing felt a little rushed. There was a lot going on and a lot of it heavy emotional stuff, yet the book rushed through things so quickly, that the emotion was lost.

After reading Throwaway Girl, I'd been expecting a great emotional read, but this fell short for me.

The premise was really good which is why this book wasn't a complete fail. I did enjoy parts of it and had it been a little more fleshed out this easily could have been an incredible read.

Rating

5/10