Until Alison

De: Kate Russo

Narrado por: Barrie Kreinik

"A powerful and wrenching mystery that claws through the polite facade of the traditional campus novel." —Ivy Pochoda, award-winning author of Sing Her Down and Ecstasy

"A deft and compulsively readable storyteller." —Claire Lombardo, New York Times bestselling author of The Most Fun We Ever Had and Same As It Ever Was

The night Alison was murdered, Rachel could have stopped it.

When Rachel Nardelli learns that Alison Petrucci—her childhood rival—is found dead in Pleasant Pond, the same place the two girls had first said “goodbye” to each other back in eighth grade, the town of Waterbury is outraged by the fear of losing one of their own—the heir to Maine’s largest construction company. But Alison’s death is a little more complicated for Rachel. She’d seen Alison the night she died. She’d said something she shouldn’t have, had callously stirred up the past. And the next morning, Alison was gone.

Plagued by the long-barbed memories surrounding Alison, Rachel joins her journalism crew to investigate the murder. But as she’s forced to revisit their fraught relationship, she falls into a web of cruelties that threatens to undo everything she understood about her past.

An explosive literary thriller from the acclaimed Kate Russo, Until Alison is a brilliantly incisive and resonant novel that is at once about class, gender, and the arbitrary nature of violence.

Book had potential but didn't deliver.

I picked up this book purely because one of the main characters shared my name, Alison. Unfortunately, that's where the excitement ended for me.
SPOILERS AHEAD

From the start, I struggled to connect with the characters. The main character, Rachel, had little to no growth throughout the story. In fact, none of the characters were particularly likeable and I found their dynamics frustrating and shallow. The constant tension over political or social class differences felt forced and lazy, especially for a murder mystery. I'm tired of this trope being used as the sole source of conflict in modern mysteries.

One plot point especially annoyed me was how an entire middle school apparently hated Alison just because her family was rich. Really? That's not only unrealistic it's weak character motivation. The rivalry between Rachel and Alison, still unclear to me. If it really stemmed from a middle school crush, then Rachel's obsession with Alison all through high school and college (to the point of cyberstalking) makes her seem unhinged. If anything, Rachel came off as the one with the real issues not Alison, whose only "flaws" seemed to be wealth and being a bit quirky.

As for the ending, it felt rushed and unsatisfying. we find out who the killer is but the reveal comes with little to no motive or deeper explanation. It left me wondering what the point of the whole story even was. for a book marketed as a thriller/ mystery, it just fell flat.

In the end, the book had potential but it didn't deliver. A great title and premise but weak execution, frustrating characters and a disappointing payoff.