The opening and premise were excellent, but delivery fell through a bit.

(I feel like I spend half my time reviewing books on Goodreads explaining why I chose 3 vs. 4 stars - it's a funny line for me!)

In this case, I considered 4 because I wasn't sure until the end how certain things would go and I was invested enough to want to find out. I hovered over 3 for a while because the characters felt almost completely one-dimensional and while I had hopes a few times that things were going to move into a different unexpected direction, the author completely stayed the course with the predictable.

The required suspension of disbelief over why the main character kept making ridiculous decisions (even with her history as laid out as it was), the coincidences one had to believe to get everything resolved as it was, and the lack of ever really finding out anything about Charlotte as a person left me unsatisfied. I appreciated the final chapter in which the author pretty much repeated and summarized all of the information gleaned from those associated with Charlotte and put it back together in a narrative that made sense because even having just read it, it was too convoluted to have made sense without that, which is probably one of the more telling aspects of my response to the novel.