“It’s ironic how the ones you care for most are the ones that are most easily able to crawl inside you and do damage.”
Don’t you just hate it when you’ve organised a holiday for some much-needed R&R, and you end up having a trip that leaves you feeling more stressed and less wealthy? However bad your worst holidays have been, we would wager it doesn’t come close to competing with Grace Evans’ stay in Wyoming. Which is how we came across Jeneva Rose’s 2023 mystery-thriller, You Shouldn’t Have Come Here. We were drawn to the rural setting and intimate, stripped-back plot, both of which can be great tools for ramping up the tension if you use it well. But, we’ll come out right now and say it folks, this was not an especially well-done read. Where did this thriller out West fall short? And were there any redeeming moments? Join us at What We Reading for our You Shouldn’t Have Come Here book review!
Date Published: 2023
Author: Jeneva Rose
Genre: Thriller, Mystery
Pages: 292
Goodreads Rating: 3.33/5
Premise
Looking for an escape from her hectic life, Grace Evans books an Airbnb on a remote ranch in rural Wyoming. When she arrives at her idyllic getaway, she is pleasantly surprised to find the owner is a handsome man named Calvin Wells, who is more than happy to show her his easygoing way of life. But, from no cell service and WiFi to a local woman being reported missing, there are things about the ranch that make Grace uneasy.
Despite her unease, Calvin and Grace bond and soon begin to fall for one another. However, as her departure day draws closer, what begins as a playful fling develops into something far more potentially dangerous. Calvin’s infatuation soon turns into an obsession, leading to Grace finally discovering the true reason for staying at his ranch.
What Worked
First off, in answer to our second question in the introduction, yes, there are a number of things Jeneva Rose gets spot on in You Shouldn’t Have Come Here.
The rural Wyoming setting work extremely well as a suitable backdrop for a locked-room mystery thriller. It’s the sort of environment that allows for suspicious locals, sells the sense of being trapped and isolated, but also a sense of beauty and tranquility that allows Calvin and Grace’s relationship to naturally blossom in the first half or so.
Rose chooses to tell the story in dual perspectives shared between Calvin and Grace, with each one immediately picking up from where the previous one left off. It’s a unique way of telling the story and works well for conveying the sense of neither protagonist being reliable; there were numerous times seemingly suspicious things would occur, but the follow-up perspective would bat them away which kept us guessing.
These flipping dual perspectives also help make the pacing of You Shouldn’t Have Come Here feel especially breathless. The chapters are already short, (the actual story only spans ten days in the book) but the structuring with the two perspectives makes it feel especially fast-paced.
What Didn’t
We’ve said it before, but thriller books live and die on their ability to deliver revelations and twists that feel shocking and fulfilling for a reader. Unfortunately, You Shouldn’t Have Come Here falls pretty well short when it comes to this. The tension ramps up fairly well as the book progresses, but nothing particularly shocking is presented to justify it.
A lot of the book relies on the tried-and-tested thriller tropes: problematic parents, wacky older relatives, bitter exes, estranged siblings etc. None of them are especially interesting or convince you they’re pivotal to the main plot. What’s more, none of them get any sort of explanation or resolution to their behaviours and actions in the story, which doesn’t help.
On that, the final culmination and truth in You Shouldn’t Have Come Here leaves so much unanswered and up in the air, which ultimately makes it so underwhelming. It raises so many questions over how and why most portions of the book played out how they did, and doesn’t deliver that satisfying impactful ‘punch’ a good thriller such as Chasing the Boogeyman does.
Finally, there were certain inconsistencies in Jeneva Rose’s writing style that were strange to us. Grace would flip from suspicious to brave to flirty to terrified all in the same chapter sometimes, and there were a number of instances where both she and Calvin would directly to the reader. The fact this only happened a handful of times made it slightly jarring when it did.
There was also a Colleen Hoover name-drop, which felt like a fairly shameless shout-out.
Verdict
Overall, this one is a miss for us. Which we almost never say here at What We Reading. You Shouldn’t Have Come Here just feels like a decent thriller prompt has been half-baked and run to publishing without much thought or planning.
The setting and dual perspectives help make it a snappy ride that most will people be able to finish in just a handful of sittings; if you’re looking for an easy escapist thriller that doesn’t require much thought, there’s some enjoyment to be had here for sure.
Unfortunately, there isn’t much in the way of shocks here. The final climax makes very little sense when stacked against the story that came before it, and there is so much up in the air as a result of it that, again, we can only think it hasn’t been properly thought through. We’re not opposed to ambiguous endings and letting readers speculate on things, but this was just a bridge too far for us.
Our Rating: 2/5
Check Out Every Single Jeneva Rose Book
Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
