Book Review: PROBLEM CHILD by Victoria Helen Stone

Title: PROBLEM CHILD

Author: Victoria Helen Stone
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Read: October 2019

Expected publication: 24 March 2020

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟

Book Description:

She’s cold, calculating, and can deceive with a smile. Jane Doe is back in the Amazon Charts bestselling series—and this time she’s met her match.

After a brutal childhood, Jane Doe has been permanently wired to look after herself and only herself. Now, looking next to normal, Jane has a lover and a job. But she hasn’t lost her edge. It sharpens when she hears from her estranged family.

Jane’s deeply troubled sixteen-year-old niece, Kayla, has vanished, and no one seems to care. Neither does Jane. Until she sees a picture of Kayla and recognizes herself in the young girl’s eyes. It’s the empty stare of a sociopath.

Jane knows what vengeful and desperate things Kayla is capable of. Only Jane can help her—by being drawn into Kayla’s dark world. And no one’s more aware than Jane just how dangerous that can be.

My musings:

When I first stumbled across the sociopath character of Jane in JANE DOE I thought I had hit the book jackpot – not only was she an interesting person who stood out from all the other protagonists in the huge sea of thriller out there, but she was also kick-ass, funny and ruthless. I was totally in awe of her determination to right a wrong done to her friend, going to extreme lengths to get revenge. Sociopath or not, I thought she also had a soft and fuzzy side, which she hid under the somewhat pragmatic view of herself as a cold-hearted, abnormal person who could not feel the same emotions as others. In short, I absolutely adored her, and couldn’t wait to get my hands on the second book in the series.

Now, after having delved into the ARC of PROBLEM CHILD with a gusto reserved for my most anticipated new releases, and finishing it way too long before publication (sometimes I just cannot resist those temptations), I've been sitting with it for a while and I'm still not sure about it. Often I find that I love the first part of a book and then feel let down by the end. Here it was the opposite. For the first 3/4 of the book I found Jane somewhat mean-spirited, sarcastic (which I normally enjoy but sometimes she crossed a line into plain rudeness), crass and a bit of a bully. Where was the soft side she showed us in Jane Doe, even if only in her feelings of affections for her cat? Sometimes I felt that the author was trying too hard to show Jane’s sociopath side, pushing it a bit over the line into unlikeable character territory for me. The interactions with her unlikeable family members were utterly depressing, as was her background story, and I would have preferred not to learn all that much about it. The story initially moved along very slowly for me, and I didn’t feel fully invested as Jane goes in search of her niece. What exactly were her motivations? Boredom? The thrill of the chase? Certainly not love for her long lost relative, she makes that very clear from the start. I was gutted that I didn’t love the book as much as I had anticipated.

All that changed at around the 3/4 mark. Suddenly it all got very interesting! I can’t really say any more without giving away spoilers, but now there was the potential for Jane to kick butt again and get her own back with some nasty people (with the help from an unexpected ally). And then came the ending - uh-oh! Now Jane has a problem. I really wished that all this had come up earlier in the book rather than the filler story I had slogged through with little emotional involvement. Now I was fully invested again I wanted more! Talk about a bookish cliff hanger!

I guess I will just have to wait for Jane Doe #3 to come out to get exactly what I had hoped for in this one. It certainly has a great premise to make a great read, and I will be lining up to get my hands on it as soon as it comes out. So even if Jane did not deliver all the goods in this book for me, she set the scene for the series to continue with a bang! I very much look forward to finding out how this will pan out – and I have a feeling that Jane may have bitten off a bit more than she can chew. Watching this space with anticipation.

Thank you to Netgalley and Lake Union Publishing for the free electronic copy of this novel and for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.