Review: At the End of Every Day by Arianna Reiche

At the End of Every Day by Arianna Reiche

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This one was really hard for me to judge.

It starts out with an interesting idea: a once-famous and beloved Southern California theme park (the author tries really hard to describe Disneyland without actually saying Disneyland) that is closing up because of a disastrous incident involving a famous young starlet’s death at the park during the opening of a land devoted to a movie starring her. The main character, Delphi, and her boyfriend are among the last of the employees to stay for the final weeks of the park to usher in its closing and guide around VIP groups and tour groups given permission to visit the non-closed parts of the park. Then weird thing start happening.

And in between the chapters of Delphi’s stream-of-consciousness narration of her days at the park, we read letters between a brother and sister describing weird things leading up to the fateful opening of the land opening and such.

It seems good right?

But the action is pretty slow-moving at first, and Delphi and Brendan, the boyfriend, never actually seem to be doing any actual work at the park, which you never get a good read on, because there’s so many names of areas and rides being thrown around, it’s hard to keep track. Then power! Things seem to just rocket forward. It’s really just kind of a lot, especially since the “solution” is kind of complicated and involves some technical issues to bring it all together.

It’s not that I didn’t like the book. It’s just that I think it could have been a little bit better organized to make it easier to follow and to keep the pace more even.



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