In honor of the season our spring edition of the book club featured Kayla Perrin’s latest novel, entitled Spring Break. This was Perrin’s 2nd effort at murder mystery novel after the successful We’ll Never Tell. Spring Break follows three college girls to the beautiful island of Artula looking to let loose and forget the problems of home. Unfortunately from day one the vacation is filled with conflict and when one of the girls disappears suspicions arise about kidnapping and a history of disappearing girls rumored to have been sold as sex slaves.
The average rating for this novel was 2.8. The members said they enjoyed the read but were very disappointed with the ending. Some felt as if they were being built up for a climax that never came. One member suspected that Perrin’s publisher forced her to make last minute changes to the ending that left the story disjointed.
Despite the ending most members found themselves wrapped up in the mystery, suspicious of characters like Jason, an Editor from NY investigating the possibility of White Slavery, the kidnapping and a sale of young white women on vacation in Artula. He was also one of the last men seen with Ashley the night of her disappearance. The book club members thought that Jason’s character was well developed and unpredictable. They had an instant connection to him. Unfortunately the same could not be said for the main protagonist Chantelle and her two girlfriends Erica and Ashley. Book club members had a difficult time feeling the characters. They had little sympathy for them and felt that each one was just a neutral player in a story that should have been heart pounding.
Book club members felt that possibly doing some flashbacks with some background history of the main characters may have helped readers to connect better with the characters. They said that Ashley qualified to be the hero in the novel but was really an anti-hero as she selfishly took advantage of character’s Ryan and Blake, her best friends and family to save herself and her sister. Book club members also didn’t find Ryan and Blake’s story to be believable. A few members said they would have enjoyed the book more if it didn’t have a happy ending. Not that they don’t like happy endings but felt that this novel would have been stronger without one because it seemed forced. One member declared that Perrin shouldn’t have given us a resolution to the murder mystery at all. Not knowing how the mystery was going to end would have made him happier because the most fun he had reading this novel was trying to guess what the true story was.
