Review of White Rabbit

I was a huge fan of Last Seen Leaving by Caleb Roehrig – it was a mystery + coming out story and one of my favorite books of 2016. While there were things I liked about White Rabbit, it didn’t always come together for me.

Read more in my review of White Rabbit below!

White Rabbit by Caleb Roehrig

To be published by Feiwel and Friends on April 24, 2018

Source: eARC for review

Synopsis adapted from Goodreads: Rufus Holt is having the worst night of his life. It begins with the reappearance of his ex-boyfriend, Sebastian—the guy who stomped his heart out like a spent cigarette — who turns up out of the blue, saying they need to “talk.”

Then Rufus gets a call from his sister April, begging for help. And then he and Sebastian find her, drenched in blood and holding a knife, beside the dead body of her boyfriend, Fox Whitney. April swears she didn’t kill Fox—but Rufus knows her too well to believe she’s telling him the whole truth.

April has something he needs, though, and her price is his help. Now, with no one to trust but the boy he wants to hate yet can’t stop loving, Rufus has one night to prove his sister’s innocence…or die trying.

Review of White Rabbit:

So… White Rabbit has a bunch of things going on. It’s a murder mystery. It’s a “happened in one night” story. It’s a sparks-fly-between-exes story. It’s a little bit of a family drama for Rufus. And a little bit of a coming out story for Sebastian.

White Rabbit started a bit slowly for me, considering the fact that it kicks off with a dead body! Rufus is the product of an affair between his mother and a married man. Rufus’s father had a son with his wife before Rufus was born, and a daughter, April, afterwards. Rufus and his mother don’t have a good relationship with his father, who is still married. April calls Rufus after she wakes up next to the dead body of her boyfriend.

The story has to get us all to speed on the family stuff and also on all the possible suspects in the murder of April’s boyfriend. It’s a lot, because the suspects are all friends that April and her boyfriend were hanging out with at her father’s vacation home. The book also includes some flashbacks about Rufus and Sebastian’s relationship.

• The initial set-up and mystery-solving made the first third of the book feel a little slow to me, but then there was a development that raised the stakes so I was happier
• While I enjoyed the flashbacks about Rufus and Sebastian’s relationship, I also felt that they slowed down the pace of the suspense plot. In addition, Sebastian had also dated girls and his family didn’t know about his relationship with Rufus, so he had some personal stuff of his own going on.
• I usually love “happened in one night stories” but I think they work better when the plot is more streamlined. With the addition of all the extra “stuff” I kept feeling like it felt like a very, very long night.
• I’m not usually a reader who loves extended action scenes, but when the story focused on action I thought things got a lot more absorbing, and the writing was stronger.
• I really liked the relationship between Sebastian and Rufus, but at times the relationship talk and flashbacks derailed the suspense. (But the way the romantic plot ended up was great.)

So I’m a little conflicted on this one. I liked all the story elements but didn’t always feel that they worked together to make a seamless whole.

If, like me, you read and enjoyed Last Seen Leaving, definitely give White Rabbit a try, as it has some similar elements – mystery and LGBT themes.

If you haven’t read Last Seen Leaving, I think it was a stronger and more cohesive book, so be sure to try it!

Have you read either of these books? Let me know in comments! Or tell me your thoughts on “happened in one night” books, exes-reunite books, and/or flashbacks!