I received an advance reader’s copy (ARC) of The Reunion by Kit Frick. Since this version is just a proof and not the final version, I won’t quote directly and will keep my comments general.

In The Reunion, the Mayweathers gather in a resort hotel in Cancun to celebrate the engagement of Elizabeth Acker-Mayweather. The tween and teen cousins haven’t seen each other in a while, and their relationships are a little complicated now. Especially after The Incident three years ago, which only Natalia, Mason, and Addison know about, but which has caused a huge rift. And then there’s Theo, the son of Elizabeth’s fiance, who wants to get to know his soon-to-be family—but the more he sees of them, the more he’s not sure he likes them. And everyone is keeping secrets, but can they stay buried when everyone is in such close proximity? Probably not, especially when one of them turns up murdered.

I’ve read another book by Kit Frick and really liked it, so I was quite looking forward to this one. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as good as the previous one I read.

I will say, though, that it wasn’t too hard to figure out the family tree. Yes, there’s one printed in the front, but also the way it’s presented and explained in the book itself is well done. I was able pretty easily to keep track of who was who’s child, who was engaged or married to whom, and so on.

The setting is also fantastic—you really feel the tropical heat, can taste the salty ocean breeze, can hear the mayhem of a busy resort beach. The descriptions draw you into this world very well.

I also enjoyed the interludes between the main plot that are set a few days after the murder, so we get glimpses of how the investigation plays out through emails to resort patrons, newspaper articles and finally police interrogation transcripts. It was an intriguing way to structure a story, especially at first when we don’t even know who the victim is.

However, while this was really cool, I almost wonder if it took away some of the suspense for me surrounding the murder. By the time we get to that point in the actual main timeline, it sort of felt anticlimactic to me. The shock factor of how was gone, so all that was left was why and who, and something about the revelation of both of those fell flat.

Furthermore, I think the way certain twists were revealed didn’t work. When the reader finds out certain things (like what the Incident was, etc.), it is merely through a character exposition-dumping it in their internal monologue. This was not interesting at all; I would much rather have gotten this information through flashbacks so we could see it actually play out. I would even settle for learning this stuff through characters telling other characters about it, not just narrating it to themselves in their heads. It was a weird choice and really didn’t work for me. Don’t just tell me things, let me see them happen!

I also think the ending was pretty frustrating. There’s almost no resolution, but I can’t find anywhere that this is supposed to have a sequel. Ugh. Not that I’d read the sequel, but still, ugh. It would have been nice to have some closure on things.In the end, there were aspects of The Reunion that I enjoyed — the setting, the dual timeline, the intricacies of character dynamics. But there were also several very significant things I didn’t like, and so in the end, I found this book to be surprisingly disappointing. But still, it’s not a terrible book, and would be a decent summer beach read. Just maybe not at a resort…

The Reunion will be published on August 29th, 2023!