Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

There are moments when I feel like I’m dying a little more every day. I feel like a fish that’s been caught and then abandoned on a dock, lying there, flopping and gasping, each gasp weaker than the last. —Kim Brooks, “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Mom,” New York Magazine This story made me feel like I was dying too. I've read 115 books in 2019, and this one might very well be the worst of the bunch. Having said that, I am so far into the minority on this one, I may as well wave my white flag now. For those of you who enjoyed this novel, please forgive me, and feel free to ignore my upcoming scathing review. I am truly, honestly, genuinely bewildered by the bright and shining reviews for this novel. It's...well, it's AWFUL. 1. Once again...we have a unreliable narrator. Blah, blah, blah. However, with this one, Devony, it's made quite clear, very early on, that she's suffering some form of severe mental illness. She hears voices. A lot. And lucky us...we get to hear them with her. Like every couple paragraphs. Over and over and over again, on every single page, throughout the entire book. I eventually just started skipping over the "voice" sections, as they were nothing but space filler...wash, rinse, repeat. It was one of the most annoying writing techniques I've ever encountered. 2. I hope you find the act of pumping breast milk fascinating, because you get to read about it at least every 3rd page. Woohoo! It's a party up in here! 3. Without giving anything away, this felt like two separate stories. It was a weird, disjointed, postpartum murder mystery. And yes...it actually was as bad as that sounds. How it was classified as a psychological thriller, I can't say. It read more as women's fiction with a side of murder thrown in for some spice. And Devony, who could barely function at the beginning of the novel...suddenly decided, a day later, she was going to solve her friend's murder, three months after it occurred. In my best Jim Carrey voice, "Well, alllll-righty, then!" She went from helpless to Wonder Woman in 2.6 seconds. 4. The writing was terrible...nothing ever really came together for me. The character development was non-existent. I never did a sense of Devony's relationship with her husband or friends. There were plot holes galore. Even the red herrings sucked. 5. Oh, and the big "twist" ending? Apparently people found it shocking. I did not. It was obvious to me from the very first chapter. Maybe that's why I couldn't stand this novel? I've read this same story so many times recently. By the end, it was taking everything in me to finish. I kept looking at my husband, rolling my eyes, and sighing loudly. Honestly, I was fed up. Vanessa Lillie clearly had a point she was trying to make with the baby story line, so why not just stick to that thread and not add in some zany Scooby Doo crime to solve? It was bizarre. It was all just so clunky. I don't know, fellow readers...maybe I'm being a unreasonable here, but I can only tell you what I thought as I was reading. I've always prided myself on being as honest as I can possibly be in my reviews, and sometimes, unfortunately, that means tearing a book apart. If I could think of a single thing to praise about Little Voices, I would. Read at your own risk. Hey, at least one of my Kindle First choices was decent. I can recommend Drowning with Others. At least I didn't feel like heaving my Kindle across the room upon it's completion.