User blog:The Jacked Maverick/Why Veil of Secrets Failed

'''The following contains spoilers for Veil of Secrets, The Junior, Book 1, and Perfect Match, Book 1. And some “mild” ones for Pretty Little Liars. Like, nothing specific. If you saw the first three seasons, you should be good?'''

New year, new stories!

...or maybe just story singular. Ride or Die: A Bad Boy Romance is the only new one.

Speaking of Ride or Die: A Bad Boy Romance… oh boy! It is awful! It’s exactly like a Wattpad/Episode story. Even the mere ANNOUNCEMENT of this book on social media had it people deeming it “the worst book ever.” People have also been saying it was worse than Home for the Holidays: something that was universally hated! A book like Ride or Die and Home for the Holidays  really hurts Pixelberry’s credibility. I am actually replaying other books that I previously hated and thought “Huh. This isn’t so bad.” now. Like Across the Void and The Royal Romance.

But I’m not here to crap on Ride or Die… A Bad Boy Romance (You have already seen the title). Today, I want to talk about the story I ABSOLUTELY despise: Veil of Secrets.

I have never seen so much potential go down in a massive trainwreck! Put down your pitchforks, and before you go to the comments and challenge me by saying that Veil of Secrets is a masterpiece, or that it is “Pixelberry at their best” let me just say that by after the end of this review, you will start to… “doubt” if whether you actually enjoyed Veil of Secrets. I hate this book so much, this is the only one I haven’t finished right away! I gave up on it at Chapter 14, the chapter before the penultimate chapter. I only recently completed it just so I could review it.

And don’t worry, I promise that I will sprinkle in some qualities that were good. It won’t be 100% slander. Or is it libel?

For this review, I will be referring to the MC as Jesse. I may be a little unreliable since I played as a straight man. So, I apologize in advance.

Before we begin, remember that bit about Home for the Holidays and Ride or Die: A Bad Boy Romance? Everybody has their own personal ranking of stories they don’t like. I think it is safe to speak for everyone to say that those two are at the absolute bottom of everybody’s list. In my personal ranking, Veil of Secrets is below Home for the Holidays! Ride or Die: A Bad Boy Romance is the only book below Veil of Secrets. And soon enough, it will undertake Veil of Secrets. Because Ride or Die: A Bad Boy Romance is good for what it IS. It IS a good "Bad Boy Romance" book. Home for the Holidays WAS a good “over the top hallmark” book. Veil of Secrets IS an awful murder mystery book.

Without further ado, here we are: Why Veil of Secrets Failed.

The Pacing
Let me just be blunt here and say that the pacing was just ATROCIOUS! Pixelberry killed off Tanner way to early! In a murder mystery, you shouldn’t eliminate the most suspicious person early! Everyone had their own theories on who was the perpetrator, and Tanner was by far high up on some people’s list.

Other examples of the pacing was shown when the killer was revealed in Chapter Fourteen: The Face of Evil. We just had a romantic moment with our Love Interest, and all of a sudden, the killer is revealed? (I’ll go more into detail on that later)

This book has so much filler, that this book continuously goes in and out of being good. One chapter has us hanging out, waiting for our next move. The next has some sort of scandal break. “*Gasp!* So and so had an affair and had a child!” And the next had a “looking back at all that happened” chapter.

Remember that chapter when we went into the lighthouse, and Duffy shot Nikolai? Looking at the comments, that was considered to be the best chapter in the book by many.

…no. It wasn’t!

Yeah it was surprising the way things were revealed, but if you think about it, it isn’t great chapter! There was no build up towards that moment! Everything before that moment has just been expository banter and just mild investigating. It feels empty and hollow. It was as though Pixelberry was like: “Hey, nothing has happened for a while. Let's add an intense scene to keep readers happy. Lets see… who can we sacrifice…?”. Nothing even happened! There were no long term effects on going there! Yeah, Nikolai could have died, but you will hardly bring that up again! Even if you save him, it wouldn’t make that much of a difference until the epilogue.

Like… what? I feel like this book would have been better with less chapters. The team behind Marvel’s Luke Cages second season wanted ten episodes, but higher ups demanded 13 Episodes. And from the end result, ten looked like it would have been better.

A reason why The Haunting of Braidwood Manor worked, is because it was only 6 chapters long. There no bullsh*t to go around in The Haunting of Braidwood Manor. Less filler, less fluff, everything was more to the point and condensed.

The Reveal
So… Jeff Duffy was the killer… okay, I WILL admit that he was completely unexpected! It was a twist that… hardly anyone saw coming! I get other people may or may not have already guessed it was him early on, but I was completely fooled! Amazing!

...too bad it was ruined by the actual reveal.

Grant called Jesse at the police station with some shocking revelation about the affair child’s whereabouts and all that… when all of a sudden, Duffy opened fire! *Exaggerated Gasp!*

...but why? Why did he decide to open fire like that? He didn’t know we were on the phone talking about him.

Say what you want about the Junior, but I felt like the Nathan thing was done better! Yeah, I said it! We found out it was him by a polaroid! Not by his mouth! And he was a love interest! The perfect cover! That made it more shocking!

I’m not saying how they handled Nathan was done well, but in my mind, Nathan being the perpetrator was more well done than Duffy!

Duffy’s revelation made me confused. “What? Did someone evil walk in and Duffy was defending himself? Did he finally snap by being abused by Walsh?” Because it took me awhile to piece everything Grant told us.

The only way Veil of Secrets succeeded is HOW we handed the villain: on a burning boat for one final showdown.

Kate O’Malley
Let me clarify, the character of Kate O’Malley is not the issue. It was what the writers did with her character that was the issue here.

I was originally going to put this in the “Pacing” section, but this reason is the biggest sin of all in Veil of Secrets, that it deserves its own section.

Again, let me be blunt; they revealed her status too early! There weren’t any stakes anymore after she was revealed to be alive, with no signs of manslaughter or molestment. After that, nothing meant anything anymore. Every clue we found was now meaningless! Since she was discovered to be A-OK, why even bother investigating at all? Yeah, Chief Walsh decided to arrest her and all that, but I already knew everything was going to work out okay with Kate! Jesse will investigate and say that Kate is innocent and all that.

If she was always going to be around, at least make her a love interest! Redheads are actually my favorite hair color on a woman. Madelaine Petsch and Bryce Dallas Howard are some crushed of mine. Both Quinn and Skye are my top two favorite Love Interests of all time. (Not because of their red hair. But because of their personalities and sad backstories) The only red head who is not my love interest is actually Tillie Marshall. And that is because Sonia trumps her!

In my opini- NO! This was the moment everything started going downhill. Period.

If they waited to reveal her status, there would have been more mystery and theories.

Why do you think Pretty Little Liars lasted as long as it did? Because Spencer is gorgeous? Because it was something teenage girls can watch? No. It was because they did a good job of handling A. They kept “rubbing the outside of our pants” to make us more and more excited surrounding the revelation of each A. So when they did reveal them, it made us joyful.

How much worse would it have been if they revealed who A was in the first half of season one?

Like, OMG. I cannot stress enough how massive a misfire it was to reveal her status. When we found her in the woods looking like that, my heart was racing. “Oh my gawd, what happened to her? She looks awful!”

The next chapter it was like, “We checked her out. She is perfectly healthy.”

...what was even the point?!?!?!

I am sorry if I sound mad… I am! This book just had so much potential...

The Love Interests (Personal Problem- I am a straight man)

 * Scarlett was completely wasted. I am pretty sure not everyone feels the same as not everybody wanted another bitchy diva as a love interest; like Kamillah Sayeed, Victoria Fontaine, and Becca Davenport. I didn’t like any of the female love interests! (More on that later) Having a love interest like someone as stunning as Scarlett would have made me have more redeemable qualities in this book.


 * Naomi isn’t LI material. Self explanatory. For the majority of the book, she was the only female only Love Interest. I liked her, I really did. But she was just a friend to me. I couldn’t see her as a lover… which brings me to:

The Ending
Thirty Diamonds to get the happy ending with our Love Interest?! No thanks. I didn’t like any of the fou- um… the two people who I am attracted to. Naomi isn’t fit to be a lover, and Kate was just “too little, too late.” I wanted to start a family with sweetheart Kate, but 30 diamonds just for one chapter on a book I absolutely hate? Absolutely not! This is the only book where I decided to stay single! You can add her to a list with Tillie on redheads who can be LIs who are not MY LI.

One thing I actually liked about the ending is that we could choose whether to let the Sterlings live or perish. I wanted to let Duffy live to let him face justice. Same for Pierce Sterling. The powerful business man who left his bastard son to rot should be sharing a cell with his warpathic mistake.

Yeah… I sympathize with Duffy… a lot… more than you can imagine.

But no, I decided to let them die in the fire. I just didn’t care at that point since this book was awful.

Things I Liked

 * The final showdown.
 * Duffy’s motives.
 * Chapter Four: First Blood. Made Kate more humanizing. It made her an actual character and not a plot device.
 * The soundtrack.

Conclusion
So… what now? Since they general public loved this book, what is there to look forward to? Since Pixelberry doesn’t fix what is already broken. “Oh, they loved this book! Lets make our next murder mystery the same way! The problems were treated with minimal response, so let's continue the same problems.”

What if people don’t know what is good for them? They wouldn’t know because we keep feeding them the same garbage. And since they don’t know better, they will continue to ask for the same crap.

I am not looking forward to anymore books like this. Which is a shame, because when Pixelberry made their twists right, they got it right! It Lives in the Woods’ twist was mind blowing. Perfect Match’s perfect match twist was shocking. (I actually NEVER suspected they were machines). I didn’t want the snake to be who it was in America’s Most Eligible: Season 10, and I was surprised.

It’s… disappointing, really.