A review by msnicolelee
Bad Cree by Jessica Johns

2.0

Bad Cree is a heartfelt family drama about battling the loss of a sister, learning to accept support from your family, and acknowledging the long-standing effects of trauma, with strong supernatural mystery elements and some minor horror. This had some great thematic content tackled in a realistic and empathetic manner, including intense topics such as grief, inter-generational trauma, depression, and substance abuse, but overall the writing fell short here and to me, missed the mark.

I wish I could give this a higher rating because it felt like a novel with great potential, but despite the skilled depiction of content I listed above, I really struggled to find this story engaging overall. Johns delivers a promising first half of the book, but it quickly started to meander and become very unfocused. I caught myself speed-reading and skimming through chapters, as I felt we were wasting time and page space in dream sequence after dream sequence, or engaging in dialogue that wasn't really moving the mystery along in a meaningful way. The plot also really begins to fall away and readers find themselves going in circles with possible clues, many things that just seem to happen for random reasons, and lackluster writing.