A weird event that seems random but intriguing enough to find out the hows and why of it.

That is how Hannah's stories start. Right in the middle and then layer by layer the story unfolds. However, this one though structually sounds good, tends to sag a bit in the middle making it an OK read.

For a complete review please click on the link below:
http://onerightword.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/sophie-hannah-kind-of-cruel.html
( )

In Hannah's latest book featuring detectives Charlie Zailer and Simon Waterhouse, frazled mom Amber Hewerdine visits a hypnotherapist to cure her chronic insomnia, but doubts anything will really happen. Under hypnosis, Amber hears herself say the phrase, "Kind, Cruel, Kind of Cruel," but she has no idea what it means. Little does she know, a chain of events is started that will cause Amber to be at the center of a murder investigation in this psychological thriller that is full of twists,turns, and secrets.

Laura W. / Marathon County Public Library
Find this book in our library catalog.

( )

Best yet - great characters and the usual prickly plot! Plus Olivia and Gibbs are still going, and with the help of a confession by Simon and by the advice of a great hypnotherapist, Charlie makes progress on the no sex front. ( )

Excellent book. ( )

I like Sophie Hannah's series of crime novels set in the fictitious Culver Valley in England. They do follow a pattern, which doesn't inhibit my enjoyment of them. Sometimes a solidly written and plotted escapist novel is no bad thing. That said, in this installment, the puzzling occurrence that sets the book in motion is so convoluted that instead of intriguing me, it made me roll my eyes. Hannah stills pulls off a convincing explanation, but it took her longer to suck me into the story because of the beginning.

Kind of Cruel centers around a prickly, opinionated woman named Amber, who is suffering from extreme insomnia. She becomes tied into a murder investigation that had stalled out through her recognition of a phrase that had been found on a scrap of paper at the murder site. As the police try to find the connection between Amber and the dead woman, Amber is desperate to find answers of her own to a family secret and another murder.

Despite the rocky start, I enjoyed this book. Despite the focus of each book being largely on the mystery, it is a series that is probably best read in order, with the relationships between the continuing characters being utterly incomprehensible otherwise. ( )