Tom Easton (1)

This is a taut thriller that is very readable. The plot is basically one long chase, so there's really no time to ever pause and go into character development. Easton gets around this with the use of flashbacks, which I found off-putting at first, but I did warm to later on. However, because our hero Mila is constantly on the run, usually with her enemies seconds from her heels, I found it a little hard to believe the meaningful friendships she manages to make with two characters who in show more reality barely spend any time with her (I definitely don't buy the 'romance'). Also, you can't really connect with Mila as a character because she is so perfectly brilliant at everything, but for a straight-forward thriller, that works. You never really get to pause for breath, so once you've finished the book, hindsight may start to point out parts of the story that were maybe not as explored or interesting as they could have been. While the thriller aspect remains exciting throughout, the story feels like it is building to something very important and to be honest, it doesn't. I was fairly disappointed by the ending. At the start of the book, I was not that enthralled with the world because it uses some very on the nose satire about our society, going in hard on refugees, social media and privacy (and I don't really buy a world where Britain becomes a utopian place to live - though the exploiting of other countries part tracks) but despite this the setting did work well with the story and Easton certainly uses the social media idea cleverly and successfully, although again the ending kind of makes the whole thing feel like a bit of a damp squib. However, it was a compelling and exciting read while I was reading it, even if I may not bother re-reading it. show less