Barnes & NobleTell Me What Really Happened by Chelsea Sedoti

Good Story. Meaningless Ending.

I would describe this book as near-perfect. I must preface that I enjoy this book and binged it in one sitting. I just tend to be a little more critical of things that are near perfect. First and foremost: Nolan was a character I just did not like. While the rest of the cast feel wonderfully human, flawed but without malice, Nolan on the other hand has little to no redeeming qualities. To me at least. He's selfish, lazy, judgemental, kind of an idiot, and quiet frankly too delusional to realize the only person he's a victim of is himself. And unlike the other characters, who are constantly growing, revealing new traits, learning new perspectives, he stays the exact same the entire time. Because his character is literally only about bigfoot, nothing else, I could not tell you anything about him or his "growth" other than he was a bigfoot obsessed jerk who realized bigfoot wasn't real the literal last 20 pages. He constantly projects his own frustrating flaws on to the people around him. And I wouldn't have minded this if I had reason to tolerate it. But I don't. He's only good when it is of direct benefit of him (ex. when they're willing to listen to him talk about bigfoot for the 50th time within the past 15 minutes). Secondly: The ending. The writer went out of their way to set everything up so wonderfully, all these little breadcrumbs, all these wonderful plot twists... And it just ends with her supposed best friend... I don't even know. Revealing that her dead friend was a liar? or a manipulator? Or a bad person? What was even the intention there? I love character drama, and it adds to things like mysteries / murder mysteries especially, but quiet frankly that is not what I picked up the book specifically for. Setting up this story through the lense of an investigation, a criminal case, only to end the book on the topic of the victims social media reputation is sooo wild to me. . . I feel like I spent the whole book building up all this energy and now I have nowhere to put it because it doesn't feel like I actually finished the book. It doesn't feel completle to me. I know what happened, but knowing what happened isn't closure in of itself. A good finish takes as must time and care as setting things up. As for praise, I will say that I just love these Non-Nolans of the cast. They feel so human and so wonderfully good but so beautifully flawed. As I read I can just feel all of their little quirks, mannerisms, insignificant details. Remove some of the more flowery book-necessary language from the dialogue and you could convince me I was reading the transcript of an actual investigation!