Torre wrote in her Author's Note that "the readers may be upset with this novel" and she's right. I am upset, but not for the reasons she thinks of.

My main problem with "If You Dare" is two things.

First, is the repetitions. She repeats the same information over and over about how psychotic Deanna is, how she isn't 'normal', how she has to lock herself inside her apartment, and how she wants to kill someone. When an author repeats something more than three times in a book, it's no longer an emphasis. It becomes an insult. As if she thinks her readers are senile or suffer chronic forgetfulness or have no reading comprehension at all, that they need to be fed the exact information they just read five pages ago or so.

Second, is how I can read the first 20% of the story and then jump straight to the last three chapters of the book and I will not miss anything. Seriously. You can skip to the last ten pages or so and you will still get the gist of what's going on. Even the last chapter feels like a summary; you can just go there and be done with it.

For me, a novel that can be understood just by reading its conclusive chapter is not a good one. Because maybe there is no story to tell. There's no journey or anything to it. It makes me feel like I've been wasting my time, and that's not a good impression of a book.