REVIEW: The Devil You Know by Trish Doller

The Devil You Know by Trish Doller
Published by Bloomsbury USA Childrens on 2nd June 2015
Pages: 246

Eighteen-year-old Arcadia wants adventure. Living in a tiny Florida town with her dad and four-year-old brother, Cadie spends most of her time working, going to school, and taking care of her family. So when she meets two handsome cousins at a campfire party, she finally has a chance for fun. They invite her and friend to join them on a road trip, and it's just the risk she's been craving-the opportunity to escape. But what starts out as a fun, sexy journey quickly becomes dangerous when she discovers that one of them is not at all who he claims to be. One of them has deadly intentions. 

A road trip fling turns terrifying in this contemporary story that will keep readers on the edge of their seats.
Thriller and mystery novels are two of my most favourite genres, I like to be made to think and be given a challenge by the author and so admittedly, having read a lot of thrillers and mysteries, I am hard to please; this is just because I want the novel to give me something that I didn't expect, yet for it also to make sense. This novel had so much potential, but I had some really big issues with it. It was predictable and questionable, and I am bitterly disappointed. The one thing I do like about this book though is the cover, it is so intriguing and mysterious!

When Cadie meets two cousins, she thinks she has finally found her time to have some fun, where she can be relieved of the pressures from her family and job. When they begin their road-trip all is like she has dreamed, however soon things start to not add up and their innocent road trip soon becomes a dangerous game. Soon Cadie realises one is not whom he claims to be...

I suppose one will start with the first aspect that frustrated me, and that was the plot's believability. Obviously when I first read the summary I knew it was about a girl who goes travelling with two strangers, but usually authors integrate these strangers rather well, making them not seem like strangers. This was sadly not the case with this novel. I don't know about you, but I would never just go off with two random guys across the country. You don't know who they are, or anything about them. And the thing that was uncomfortable when reading this was that out main character Arcadia didn't even really question whether this was actually a good idea or not, she just did it. And as a character, I felt this novel could have really made her shine, and really do something good with her character, but instead she came across very naive and just did whatever she was told to do; she didn't seem to think for herself.

The plot was predictable. From the get-go I had already worked out which of the two it was. But the thing that really frustrated me was that, when (highlight for spoiler: Lindsey left, let alone when they were told she was missing,) none of them worried or thought to themselves they needed to go back, they just carried on, and paid only one line of thought. Their total disregard for her really shocked me and left a sour taste in my mouth. Everything in this novel was just thrown together far too quickly; the relationships, conclusions, plans. None of it felt realistic or engaging. At times the plot goes from one extreme to the other, it was too fast-paced then too slow-paced; it just did not flow together and continuously felt disjointed. And as for the  plot again, it was predictable and questionable. The characters were one-dimensional, they did not feel like they were really explored and just felt like they were there just in order to write the novel, not to play their roles.

(Highlight between here: Additionally, the conclusion of this novel in terms of Matt's motivation, was all because of a car. I mean, really?! A car?! That was the best motivation behind the guy's murders, a car?! That was the final straw for me, I had had enough at that point and it really topped it off for me. and here for the spoiler 😊)

Overall The Devil You Know was incredibly disappointing, and this is a good case of don't judge a book by its cover.


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