The Dahlia Suite — Carinn Jade
Title: The Dahlia Suite
Author: Carinn Jade
Genre: Mystery | Thriller | Suspense
Format: eARC
Publisher: Atria Books
Rating: ⭐⭐¾ — 2.75/5
Synopsis
Welcome to Sueños, an exclusive luxury resort located on the Caribbean's Beck Island, where three women arrive at very different points in their lives.
Paige, a former lawyer turned writer, hopes her time away will help her overcome the writer's block threatening her new career.
Hollywood actress Lindsay Law is recovering from an Oscar loss and becomes fascinated by Mara Morgan, the legendary actress who once owned Beck Island before her death.
Meanwhile, resort concierge Gabby is grieving the loss of a former coworker while confronting mysteries of her own, including the troubling disappearances of women connected to the island.
As secrets surrounding Sueños and its history begin to surface, their seemingly separate stories gradually become connected.
My Thoughts
I really wanted to like this one, but unfortunately The Dahlia Suite just wasn't for me.
We're on Beck Island at Sueños, an incredibly luxurious Caribbean resort, following several different characters.
Paige is a former lawyer turned writer who is struggling with both writer's block and the fact that she desperately wants another child but has suffered multiple miscarriages.
Lindsay is a Hollywood actress whose career isn't exactly going according to plan after losing an Oscar, and she's become fascinated by Mara Morgan, the famous actress who once owned the island.
Then there's Gabby, a concierge at the resort who is dealing with something considerably more sinister involving a former employee and women disappearing.
And this is where my biggest problem started.
For the majority of the book, I felt like I was reading two completely different novels that happened to take place at the same resort.
When Are These Stories Going to Meet?
On one side, I had Paige and Lindsay dealing with motherhood, pregnancy, careers, writing, Hollywood and Mara's history, eventually deciding to work on a movie about her.
On the other side, Gabby is dealing with disappearances, death and an actual mystery.
And I'm sitting there like...
So, when are the stories going to meet?
Because based on the premise, I expected these three women to come together and investigate what was happening on the island.
And they do eventually converge.
The problem for me was how long it took to get there.
Until then, the different threads didn't feel connected enough, and unfortunately I found myself considerably more interested in one side of the story than the other.
Rather than feeling like different pieces of the same mystery gradually moving toward each other, they often felt like separate stories competing for my attention.
The Pacing
This was probably the biggest issue for me alongside the structure.
The book moved incredibly slowly.
And that's particularly difficult for me with a thriller because look at what we have here:
Murders.
Disappearances.
Secrets.
A dead Hollywood actress with a mysterious history.
An exclusive Caribbean resort where something clearly isn't right.
Those are all ingredients that should have had me glued to the page.
Instead...
I was bored.
Which is probably the saddest thing I can say about a thriller.
I kept waiting for the tension to build and for that moment where everything suddenly clicked into place and I couldn't put the book down.
Unfortunately, it never really happened for me.
Some Interesting Ideas
There were individual elements that I liked.
In particular, I thought the contrast between Paige desperately wanting another child and Lindsay finding herself facing a very different situation regarding motherhood was interesting.
Both women are confronting complicated questions about motherhood, identity and what they actually want from their lives, but they're approaching them from very different directions.
I also thought Mara's history and her connection to Beck Island had a lot of potential.
The problem was that there were so many individual character struggles and storylines competing for attention that the actual mystery never grabbed me the way I wanted it to.
And when I'm reading a thriller or mystery, I really need that central question pulling me forward.
That Final Stretch...
I made it to around 84% before finally accepting that I wasn't suddenly going to connect with the book.
By that point, I should have been racing toward the ending and desperately wanting answers.
Instead...
I was mostly desperate to be finished. :(
The final portion does bring the different storylines together, but for me it simply happened too late.
I needed that connection much earlier to make the whole thing feel like one cohesive story rather than two books that eventually realized:
Oh. Right. We're supposed to merge.
And unfortunately, once I'd spent that much of the book feeling disconnected from the mystery, the ending couldn't completely pull me back in.
Final Thoughts
The Dahlia Suite had several individual ideas that interested me, but the overall structure and pacing didn't work for me.
I wanted the three women's stories to become intertwined much sooner, particularly because that was one of the things that initially attracted me to the premise. Instead, I spent most of the novel waiting for the separate threads to finally come together.
There are definitely readers I can see enjoying this much more than I did—particularly those who prefer slower, character-driven mysteries that spend significant time exploring the characters' personal lives before bringing the different storylines together.
Unfortunately, I went in expecting more of a thriller, and I never found the tension or momentum I was looking for.
Interesting ideas.
Gorgeous resort setting.
Plenty of secrets.
Just, unfortunately, not the mystery for me.
2.75⭐
ARC Disclaimer
Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this ARC. All opinions are my own.
No comments:
Post a Comment