The Reunion

Classified as a mystery thriller, this book establishes itself as one quickly, going to great lengths to describe a lot of different things. Some may be important, and some not, but if you don't set this precedent early then it is much harder to shoehorn in later. A lot of long, descriptive paragraphs frame this story, giving us a view into what is going to be coming next. Everything is necessary as everything plays a part in creating the atmosphere of the story. To further add a sense of being within this story, there is a 3d map at the start that allows us to see where everything is placed and what it looks like. Not every book needs this, but what this does show is that they are going to be travelling to many different areas around this small town.

However, at times this became too much. It felt like the narrative was disappearing at certain points, and instead, the descriptive writing started taking over. This isn't the worst thing, but when it is consistent and feels like it takes away from the rest of the book because it happens so frequently, it starts to become a problem. One that this book holds.

Small things, such as showing the perspective of Vinca, the girl who disappeared in 1992. This appearance, alongside the story in the present-day and from 25 years ago gives us great depth and perspective into the disappearance of Vinca, and what skeletons her recently reunited friends have in their closet. Chapters are short, which is why a lot of information is condensed into each one. Each chapter seems experimental. The whole book has a feeling that the author was just trying different things, which I always appreciate, but sometimes this allowed the reader to be thrown all over the place too much. Since this is heavily prevalent at the start it can make this book intimidating for a first-time reader as they wouldn't know what to expect in the first place.

A lot of looking into the past, self-introspection, was done here as the main character looked back on his life as he tried to solve the mystery in the present. Things like not knowing whether to trust his own memory or not were things that he had to deal with. He also had to deal with all the skeletons that were jumping out of the closet from some of his friends and family.

This part did feel rushed though as if more time could've been spent establishing certain relationshipS through showing rather than telling. Not everything needs to be shown, and some can just be told, but there was so much telling. So many times we were told what is going to happen, or what a person was like, rather than just shown this through the interaction with other people. It works to an extent, but this book takes it a bit too far for me and makes the narrative take up less room and seem less important.

Other things that I did appreciate were how well crafted the finale for this story was. Everything came together and made complete sense in the way it was written. That doesn't mean that I was particularly interested in this conclusion though. This conclusion didn't feel satisfactory to me and was only interesting in the sense that I hadn't been expecting everything that happened to happen. This was sort of offset by how much I didn't care about the characters. There wasn't much set-up for all the different characters, it felt like there were too many to fit into such a small book, so caring about them wasn't something that the author could really accomplish. The reveals, although nice, were hindered by this as everything felt like it was being viewed from another perspective. The main character felt like he was too leisurely for someone who had to experience so much tragedy. Even when he was going through it I didn't feel like I was really connected to the character as it was something he glossed over, not giving it enough attention. So many other things were explained, not shown, and yet this was the opposite, with only small things (I don't consider them big enough in my opinion), hinted at the effects that all this tragedy was having on his mental state overall.

Not the sadness he was feeling, or the obsession he had with finding Vinca's killer, but moreso his feelings. I wanted to know what was going on inside his head but felt like his head was filled up with descriptions of the environment and people. Some will definitely like this, and it could even be argued that this was done purposefully to properly show how he now copes with what he did, and Vinca's death. Those things still don't mean that the construction of this book was the correct choice to make. Books can be expertly constructed, and yet not feel like you are involved with the characters, which is the main thing that this book missed.

Maybe someone more familiar with the area being described might have a better connection to them, but I assume that the highest audience isn't people from this specific town and that people across the world are buying this book, making that point moot.

I appreciated how some of the characters who weren't good people were able to get off scot-free. With the way everything else was set up, this was the right choice and fell into line with the messages that the rest of the book was trying to convey.

Overall, I thought that this was a decent read. Not something that I could see myself going back to and reading again, but something that I think was mildly interesting while I was reading it. If you are interested in all that description then go right ahead. It does that very well. But if you are trying to form bonds with the characters and feel like you are a part of the story, joined together in their friend group. One of them. Then this book might not be the best one for you.

book: The Reunion

author: Guillaume Musso