Follow Me Down: A Novel

This book was really interesting, but the ending sequence was a bit anticlimactic. To start, the beginning of this novel immediately caught my attention. 10 pages in and the book signifies that it is about Mia (the main character) looking for Lucas, her missing brother that is being charged for the rape and murder of a young teenage girl named Madison. I was intrigued and kept on reading. I even came up with my own theories of who actually killed the teenage girl because I doubted that Lucas did these horrific acts. Another thing that made the story more interesting was the lack of belief in Mia. Mia did not believe her brother was capable of rape and murder, but the cops and town thought so otherwise. Plus, I felt terrible for Mia, as she was physically assaulted, mauled, insulted, was presumed crazy, and nobody believed her theories of who killed the teenage girl. This provided more drama and gave the audience the same feeling of hopelessness that Mia felt. In addition, she made some crazy decisions that fueled the drama even further, such as withholding evidence to figure out the mystery herself. At last and definitely least, the ending was boring and unrealistic. Mia figures out who the murderer is and it turns out to be two people who were jealous of Madison. One of the murders knocks out Mia and Mia wakes up to the sight of her brother chained up and being sexually assaulted by one of the murderers. This murderer was obssessed with Lucas Haas and thought that Madison was “stealing him from her” despite Lucas not wanting anything to do with both of them. This reveal let me down because these two characters weren’t even important to the story and how they got away with murdering Madison and kidnapping/framing Lucas is so unrealistic. However, Lucas and Mia escape from the two murderers, with the sister and brother visiting their mother in the mental institution and celebrating Christmas. I was expecting a dark ending from this novel because real life is not all about happy endings, but it showed me that there is more than one perspective in every story. In this case, the cops, Madison’s family, and the whole town thinks Lucas did it, but Mia said that Lucas was not capable of rape and murder. This also brings me to my next point, which is that this novel shows real life problems. The issues shown in this book are Lucas and his relatives getting extreme hate based on allegations, what a person goes through when no one believes them, weed/alcohol addiction, a troubled childhood, and that the sum of everyone’s lies led to an innocent person being charged with rape and murder. This was a good book overall, with an interesting beginning, a good mystery, and important messages. However, the ending ruined the novel for me. Therefore, I give this book a 7/10.