Once upon a time there was an author named Justin Kramon. He wrote a quirky and heartwarming tale of a girl named Finny. I liked that book a lot. I’ve been meaning to re-read it to see if I still love it as much, but I haven’t gotten to that.
However, many months ago, I got an early copy of his new novel, The Preservationist. I knew right away that I’d read it, no matter what it was about. As it turns out, it had sort of a creepily eerie cover and was about a mentally tormented college student who ends up being stalked.
Mystery/suspense is not my go-to genre, but I have read my fair share, especially when I was younger, so of course that didn’t deter me, though I was surprised that the subject seemed so different. And a preservationist? What exactly is that?
So I read it, and I wasn’t disappointed. Though it was more plot-driven than character driven, the characters were rich with the sort of smart humor that I liked in his previous novel. The mystery – who was attacking the girls on campus and who was stalking Julia (and were they the same person?) – unraveled at a nice pace with enough twists to keep me guessing.
Additionally there were the subplots of more character-driven mystery, like why Julia had dropped out of school, and how she was going to handle her predicament, which I enjoyed.
If you like suspense, especially ones with well-developed and written characters, then you’ll probably like this one.