Ruin Falls by Jenny Milchman

2.0 out of 5 stars -- Road trip nightmare...

The Daniels family is taking a rare family vacation away from the Adirondack Mountains and decides on an unexpected overnight stay in a hotel room.

This was supposed to be a suspenseful thriller about a woman who wakes one morning to discover that her children are missing from their room. Worse yet, it's her husband who has taken them and who has also vanished. The police are unable to help because it is deemed a domestic issue rather than a crime. The family dynamics and relationships are completely dysfunctional and friendships are questionable.

From that premise, the narrative deteriorates into a whimpering mess of a frantic mother and the ridiculous notions of where the husband and children have gone and why. The mother, Liz, annoyed me from almost the first pages of the book and I never felt any empathy for her despite the author's efforts to make me feel her emotional pain and give a care. The villains were cardboard stereotypes whose motivations were never fully explored or explained. I was not drawn into the drama, and some scenes almost made me scoff out loud. The "deep secret" was not only completely predictable, but anticlimactic.

In short, I'd love to have back the couple of hours I wasted and would not have finished this book except that I had chosen it from Amazon Vine and thus had to read it to write a review. Skip it.

Amazon Vine ARC