No One Else Can Have You by Kathleen Hale

No One Else Can Have You by Kathleen Hale
Series: No
Publisher: Harper Teen
Publication Date: January 7th 2014
Source: For Review From Publisher [Edelweiss]

Small towns are nothing if not friendly. Friendship, Wisconsin (population: 688) is no different. Around here, everyone wears a smile. And no one ever locks their doors. Until, that is, high school sweetheart Ruth Fried is found murdered. Strung up like a scarecrow in the middle of a cornfield.

Unfortunately, Friendship’s police are more adept at looking for lost pets than catching killers. So Ruth’s best friend, Kippy Bushman, armed with only her tenacious Midwestern spirit and Ruth’s secret diary (which Ruth’s mother had asked her to read in order to redact any, you know, sex parts), sets out to find the murderer. But in a quiet town like Friendship—where no one is a suspect—anyone could be the killer.

I was super excited for No One Else Can Have You because it sounded like it was going to be such a brilliant mystery novel since Friendship is a very small town where everyone knows everyone, but one of them is a murderer. Unfortunately, I ended up really hating this book. It was a mixture of things really. The writing style wasn't that engaging, the dialect used made me want to punch most of the characters and the plot was actually really predictable.

No One Else Can Have You is set in a small town in Wisconsin called Friendship. Everyone thinks they know each other pretty well in this town, until a young girl is found hanging from a tree in a cornfield. Someone in town did that to this girl and it sends the whole town into a panic. The police in Friendship aren't used to dealing with something so major so they make their decision and try to sweep it under the rug while Kippy realises that there might be more going on so she decides to investigate on her own.

There were a lot of things that pissed me off in this book and led to me really not enjoying it. There was nothing in this book that I could take seriously and I just found it ridiculous.

Reason number 1, the main character. Kippy annoyed the hell out of me. There was nothing likeable about her. She didn't have much of a personality and she was just pretty boring overall. Also, she had some of the weirdest nicknames ever: Cactus, Pimple, Pickle and the worst one of all, Chocolate Bum. Her dad calls her Chocolate Bum... what the fuck? Who calls their kid Chocolate Bum? 

Reason number 2, the constant use of 'Ooft', 'Geeze Louise' and 'Sex Relations' had me wanting to punch every single character in this book. 'Ooft' was the worst one. It didn't even make sense at the start of half of the sentence! And then Kippy could never just say sex she always had to say 'sex relations' and it grated on my nerves. I have no idea why it annoyed me so much, but it did.

Reason number 3, the writing. There were some sentences in this book that just made me want to punch someone. They were so ridiculous and half of it was stuff I've never heard anyone actually say, ever.

"Fuck your mother, Libby, hows that?" Davey takes another sip of Beast. "Sex her right in the butt."

"Your daughters a hoochie mama," I blurt.

'Sex her in the butt'? 'Hoochie mama'? I was basically killing myself laughing at most of this book because of the writing. I just couldn't take it seriously when there are characters coming out with stuff like that.

And reason number 4, this book was extremely predictable and boring. I ended up guessing the murdered right at the start. I was just sitting thinking 'Haha, imagine if that person was the killer. That'd just be hilarious.' And I was right, which completely ruined the big reveal at the end for me. The other thing that ruined it for me was that I found most of this book boring and ended up skim reading most of it just so I could find out who the killer was. That was all I really cared about in this book. I didn't like any of the characters, I didn't give a shit about their lives or their relationships, I just wanted to know who killed Ruth. And that was it.

Ruth's diary entries that were occasionally shown throughout the book just showed how much of a bitch her character was, and I had no sympathy for her. She was constantly insulting Kippy and saying how clingy she was. I kind of felt sorry for Kippy, but not really because I didn't like her.

So overall, as you can probably tell, I really didn't enjoy this book. It definitely wasn't for me. I know there are people out there who have enjoyed this book, but I definitely wasn't one of them.