Het is geen onaardig verhaal, maar de vorm waarin het gegoten is, is niet origineel en de personages konden mij niet echt boeien, hoewel ik ze ook niet stom, irritant en onwaarschijnlijk vond.

Ik heb geen moment overwogen om het boek niet uit te lezen, want het was redelijk snel uit en bevatte voor mij genoeg om gewoon lekker door te lezen. Het feit dat ik de naam van de hoofdpersoon al niet meer wist, terwijl ik het boek gisteravond heb gelezen, zegt overigens wel genoeg volgens mij. ( )

A pupil at the school Sarah teaches at has gone missing. While on a run, Sarah discovers her body. Chapters dealing with the investigation of this murder are interspersed with ones set in Sarah's childhood, when her brother Charlie went missing.

Far inferior to the Maeve Kerrigan series. The "romance" bits read a bit like a young or new adult book and there was far too much going on. There were at least three novels' worth of plot in the last quarter of the book.

SPOILERS

The suggestions that Sarah might have something to do with the present day case were laid on rather heavily and made it hard to trust anything she said. That and the fact that she kept inserting herself in the case and chatting to the reporter and generally behaving oddly. This made for a rather detached read.

I skimmed most of it. ( )

This book is easy, and for the most part, pleasurable read. Although I did have a couple of issues with the story. The first being that the main character is written to be an extremely beautiful woman, and yet she lacks so much confidence that she has the backbone of a doormouse. Even with her painful past, I could not come to terms with her insecurity and passive personality. With beauty comes power and usually some degree of vanity. The other issue is that the ending is a little jarring, it's very violent, not really in keeping with the earlier part of the book. After the ending, I was not surprised to read in the author interview at the back of the book, that her next book will be about a serial killer. That said, this was still a pleasant time waster, but I will not be reading her future books. There are just too many great authors out there & too little time, to waste on the middling ones. ( )

This book started off fine but there were just somethings that happened that I didn't believe would happen in reality.
Would a policeman really start a relationship with the person who found the body of a murder victim, not only that but this person knew the victim and would have to be considered a suspect.
If somebody killed the murderer who wasn't threatening them would a policeman cover it up and say they were acting in self defence? While many wouldn't care about a man who murdered his wife and daughter and also attempted to kill another person I just can't see the police ruling it as self defence when the person he wasn't going to kill and was going to let go turns around and kills him. ( )

This is a standalone.
A few nice twists, although the final one was nearly obvious (well, I did not see it coming, but it was not totally unexpected as I skimmed a few reviews first, nearly spoiling me the book).
Except for the ending, that was bit much, this is a highly recommended book.
Great writing, as always with Jane Casey. ( )