Book Review: They All Had A Reason by Michele Leathers

Synopsis:

Sixteen-year-old Charlotte is convinced her life would be perfect if she could only get past the one obstacle holding her back: A girl named Bellany Silverfield, who seems to have it all — beauty, popularity, power and the boy of Charlotte’s dreams. But when Bellany is murdered, Charlotte’s life doesn’t get any better. In fact, it gets much worse. Charlotte worries that circumstantial evidence and rumors of motive will make her a prime suspect. She’s forced to question the loyalty of her closest friends and to place her trust in a boy she barely knows. But one of these people is definitely lying to her.

Review:

Mystery thrillers are my absolute favourite genre right now and when this came up on Kindle Unlimited, I had to check it out. The cover instantly drew me in and it was a very entertaining read.

The characters feel a little shallow at times, especially Charlotte, but I can overlook this if the book is entertaining enough. She was either completely headstrong and stubborn, throwing herself into dangerous situations, or completely dumb and giving away her plans.

I wasn’t expecting the greatest mystery in the world as this is a YA book (I’m not saying YA books can’t be complex) but its short length meant there wasn’t really a lot of time to actually weave the story. What you do get is pretty well written, even if the style is very simplistic.

What I will say about the mystery is that the twist was pretty good. It’s a little obvious, but the ending definitely has me interested in the second book. Hopefully, you get to see the aftermath of this book because Charlotte finds out her best friend basically betrayed her and Bellany’s brother, Bridger, her other best friend apparently completely turned on her and you never hear from him again.

There are quite a few two-dimensional side characters that the author attempts to use as plot drivers, but they fall quite flat. At times, there’s a sense of danger and urgency when it comes to them, but nothing ever comes to fruition.

Without giving any spoilers, I was worried about Charlotte getting close to Wade. I was suspicious that he killed Bellany and got close to Charlotte because they share a slight resemblance (they had the same hair length and colour, same height and had very similar cars). There was a scene where he strokes her face and touches her hair and I was thinking “girl, get away from him”. Thankfully this wasn’t the case, which isn’t a spoiler because he was never a suspect. Only I suspected him apparently.

There’s quite a lot of body shaming in the later half of They All Had A Reason and it really isn’t great. I was really enjoying the book until that point and I still did but it definitely leaves a sour taste. Hopefully, this was used to show how bad of a person the character is and doesn’t reflect the author’s views. Let’s hope not.

I’ve made it sound like I didn’t enjoy They All Had A Reason when it was actually the opposite, I’m just better at explaining things I didn’t like. The book as a whole was entertaining and I enjoyed trying to figure out the mystery. I will be checking out the second book at some point and I’m excited to see where the story goes next.