BOOK REVIEW: THE CHILD FINDER BY RENE DENFELD

1.5 stars idk this felt like it was trying so hard to be deep and poignant but really it just ended up being sappy and a little cringey my biggest issue with this is that every single moment in the book felt like the author wanted it to be A Moment. characters who'd known each other for all of 5 minutes were already like woah I see all the emotional walls you've put up behind your smile !! you gotta let the past go !! you can't keep holding on to those vulnerabilities forever !! and the whole time I was like ????? first of all, no one would ever say that to anyone they'd known for that short a time, and second of all, no one talks like that. pretty much all the scenes ended up feeling ridiculously forced because they were written with the subtlety of a brick to the face. also, the main character Naomi is supposed to be 30 but felt like she was 10 (and spoke like she was 10). and her overall characterization was so poor. all I know about her is that she trusts 3 people, and I only know that bc the author explicitly told us about it like 32830123 times :) :) :)  the writing style was redundant, the plot was boring with a bunch of unnecessary side-plots (not to mention convenient as hell), the shifting POVs annoyed me—frankly this book is just one big blob in my head right now. nothing about it left any kind of lasting impression one me. it was just BLEH. that's about as close as I can get to representing my experience reading The Child Finder for you...