The premise of this book is that Haley meets this mystery guy at a party that her parents made her attend. They snuck out of the party and spend the night together going to a concert and talking. The mystery guy disappears, and she later finds that he has been dead for two years. This leads Haley and her friend, Linzi, on a scavenger hunt/road trip to try and figure out the truth. The two end up in Crescent Cove, and encounter “Bodyguards”, professional surfers, and drama.

There are few words to describe how I feel about this book. It was slow. This is a mystery so it’s important that there is enough substance to keep the reader wanting more; however, with this one because everything was slow it felt overly long and boring. I stopped caring about the mystery midway through the book. And I grew frustrated with Haley not finding the mystery guy and lack of exciting things happening.

She does eventually find him at the end; however, it felt a little disappointing and all for nothing. If this book was going to be about soul searching, there should have been major instances where we see the character turning into a new person and developing a new outlook on life. Because when that character finally has that “Ah-ha” moment, readers are going to be slightly confused and wondering where that journey started.

Another problem I had is that there were many chunky paragraphs with some much details. The dialogue was hidden between them. It became a little intimidating and confusing. What I mean is, I felt like the author took time to describe everything and I was confused about the situation that was taking place. It made me want to skim and skip over pages which in turn made it easy for important conversations to get lost.

Characters

There were so many characters. Their personalities began to run together, and character names begin to get mixed up. It made it really hard to connect with characters because they were not really three dimensional and are not really memorable. We never got that heart to heart moment with characters or that moment that would show us who they really were. I didn’t really know them or know what to expect out of them.

Haley’s reason for searching for this mystery guy was a little unrealistic and impulsive. Instead of her searching for him because of the mystery of it all, it was because she felt drawn and in love with him. She knew him for one night and there was little connection between them, so the idea that she would drop everything and go searching for him was a little odd.

Final Analysis

Chasing Down Forever was not my cup of tea; however, many loved this book.