This is a hard book for me to review because I was really enjoying it up until the final chapters. The characters were slowly built up and developed and the strained relationship between sisters Robin and Melanie was the centre piece of the stories dysfunctional family. Tension built up nicely as more character and suspects were introduced. However, none of the suspects ever appear even slightly guilty.
Unfortunately the book is guilty of making the real killer a little too obvious. It's almost a trope of these sort of books that there is a seemingly pointless, slightly odd character that escapes close attention until the final act. However, there is a final twist in the killers motives and accomplice which did shock me. Looking back through the book there are clues and signs that I had noticed but ignored which all help to make sense of the final twist. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem believable. The final act suddenly draws everything together, reveals the killer and ends the story. However, it misses several key details and never really gives us a true account of what happened and why which results in a thoroughly unsatisfactory ending. If any story ever needed an epilogue it was this one. And yet somehow it didn't get one.. I'd love to have known what happened to the Davis family afterwards, however, the final act seems to have been finished in a rush without the same thought that went into the rest of the book, and therefore, an epilogue or a satisfactory ending wasn't provided.
Ultimately I feel this book would have been far stronger had it remained as a relationship drama with it's focus on the Davis siblings and their broken family as they attempt to recover and rebuild after the murders rather than attempting to be a murder-mystery.
Unfortunately the book is guilty of making the real killer a little too obvious. It's almost a trope of these sort of books that there is a seemingly pointless, slightly odd character that escapes close attention until the final act. However, there is a final twist in the killers motives and accomplice which did shock me. Looking back through the book there are clues and signs that I had noticed but ignored which all help to make sense of the final twist. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem believable. The final act suddenly draws everything together, reveals the killer and ends the story. However, it misses several key details and never really gives us a true account of what happened and why which results in a thoroughly unsatisfactory ending. If any story ever needed an epilogue it was this one. And yet somehow it didn't get one.. I'd love to have known what happened to the Davis family afterwards, however, the final act seems to have been finished in a rush without the same thought that went into the rest of the book, and therefore, an epilogue or a satisfactory ending wasn't provided.
Ultimately I feel this book would have been far stronger had it remained as a relationship drama with it's focus on the Davis siblings and their broken family as they attempt to recover and rebuild after the murders rather than attempting to be a murder-mystery.