Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Warning: There are spoilers in the comments on this review. If you don't want spoilers, don't read the comments. This review itself has NO spoilers. You're safe until you hit the comments. This is a tender love story entwined around a man's loss of his wife. We are swept along by his grief, share in his life after her passing, and are seduced into opening our hearts to him by his attempts to heal. There are little touches like a dog that comes into his life, a photographer who wanders into his path, etc. It's an entrancing novel that was really keeping me engaged. Through it all, I wondered if Chloe had been murdered, what hints was I missing, what was going to happen next. There was a feeling of impending revelation, where I thought for sure, we would find out who and why someone killed Chloe. I didn't care for Emma pushing herself on a man who was recently widowed, but I was leaving room for cluelessness. And then, in an awful moment of deus ex machina, we find out what happened. And it ruins the entire book. This bitter-sweet story of grief and recovery and possible mystery turns into a mess where almost every character you cared about is revealed as hateful. The plot itself is out of left field and so unbelievable it's ludicrous. The "twist" makes this whole book just a total waste. It doesn't feel ground-breaking, truth-revealing, or brilliant. It doesn't feel relevant to the human condition. It feels unbelievable and manipulative. I was left sitting there, feeling quite a bit of anger toward the author, saying to myself, "Really? Really?!!!! That's your big idea? That's your big reveal?" And then, to top it off, the story gets worse with how everyone acts after the twist. I'd like to get every minute of my life back, including the time I spent caring about, wondering about, and worrying about these characters. What a waste. Like another reviewer said, the only faithful thing left was the dog. I'm not going to lie, the author is a good writer. But their idea of a plot twist ruins the book. It doesn't add anything useful to the characterization; it downright ruins the entire story. It's almost impossible to explain without spoilers, and I'm seriously tempted to add a spoiler warning and say it, but I can't bring myself as much as I think potential readers should be warned that this book's description is majorly misleading. Edited to add: If you want more info to judge the book, there are spoilers in the comments on this post.