I realise having written this that it's a long review so I thought I'd include a Tl;DR:
The quotes on the front read "Gripping""Absolutely fantastic" and "incredibly pacey" I agree with 2 of these.
All in all a very good read,perfect if you're a fan of this genre but don't like plots getting too convoluted or busy at the cost of the reader's enjoyment.
Excellent character building, moderately good plot.
I would recommend it to others and I must stress I did really enjoy it once I'd committed to it.
Read on for more:
I'd like to start off by explaining briefly that this book got it's 5 star rating because for me it varied between some incredibly written 5-star aspects, and some more generic 3-star content. I enjoyed the book and the twist at the end so whilst I would'n't give it 5/5 it was better than a 3 ,kind of a mid to high 4 in my view.
Now this story is written from the perspective of the main character Alison Smith and we keep that perspective for most of the books,with the odd chapter devoted to the point of one of the other few main characters to provide information to the reader that Alison doesn't have. There are however 2 lines of story through the book,"back then" and "now". I often find books that are segmented like this either work really well and add depth and insight into the characterisation and the story, or fail and make the whole experience disjointed for the reader.
I am please to say that CRH does this very well, the sections are long enough to flush out the plot lines without too much jumping, and she chooses logical breaks in her story writing to switch around. All of which can be tricky to do but works well.
Their are 2 main points that really made me want to give it a 5/5 rating. Number 1. the realism- I believed throughtout that this is a thing that could plausibly be happening(which is the first hurdle in a thriller novel like this) and number 2. the amount of detail and depth of the character she has written. At no point in the story could I not picture and imagine how the events were making the character feel, but not in an overt or blunt way, just the phrasing and descriptions chosen gave enough clues and detail for my imagination to be able to fill in the rest.
I cannot stress enough how good the main character and her interactions are with other entities for seeming life-like and making me as the reader invest in the book.
(Yes as with any book you can't flesh out every character, and I would have liked to know more about Detective Shaw, as he seems to play a big part in the "then" sections and later in the now story but I never felt like I understood the cops fully, contrasted to the other characters)
This more than anything made me read the whole book as fast as my free-time would let me.
Now for the downside, the characters and suspense are what makes this book great. It is a good plot,don't get me wrong, but other than the Irish setting and the obvious points of the crime and locale, too me it doesn't have much to set it apart from the crowd. It follows the usual pattern of serial killer and did he didn't he etc. that could be set in any location with a canal and produce the same story, other than the geographic links and the nature of the crime there isn't much to set the storyline apart from others in the genre(In my view). There's nothing wrong with it, just wasn't exceptional.
I don't want to leave a spoiler but I would encourage everyone to stick with it though, as I almost didn't after reading 30% of it, but it does then pick up, especially with the accompanying developing of characters. There are also some wonderful twists and changes of pace that I didn't see coming.
The quotes on the front read "Gripping""Absolutely fantastic" and "incredibly pacey" I agree with 2 of these.
All in all a very good read,perfect if you're a fan of this genre but don't like plots getting too convoluted or busy at the cost of the reader's enjoyment.
Excellent character building, moderately good plot.
I would recommend it to others and I must stress I did really enjoy it once I'd committed to it.
Read on for more:
I'd like to start off by explaining briefly that this book got it's 5 star rating because for me it varied between some incredibly written 5-star aspects, and some more generic 3-star content. I enjoyed the book and the twist at the end so whilst I would'n't give it 5/5 it was better than a 3 ,kind of a mid to high 4 in my view.
Now this story is written from the perspective of the main character Alison Smith and we keep that perspective for most of the books,with the odd chapter devoted to the point of one of the other few main characters to provide information to the reader that Alison doesn't have. There are however 2 lines of story through the book,"back then" and "now". I often find books that are segmented like this either work really well and add depth and insight into the characterisation and the story, or fail and make the whole experience disjointed for the reader.
I am please to say that CRH does this very well, the sections are long enough to flush out the plot lines without too much jumping, and she chooses logical breaks in her story writing to switch around. All of which can be tricky to do but works well.
Their are 2 main points that really made me want to give it a 5/5 rating. Number 1. the realism- I believed throughtout that this is a thing that could plausibly be happening(which is the first hurdle in a thriller novel like this) and number 2. the amount of detail and depth of the character she has written. At no point in the story could I not picture and imagine how the events were making the character feel, but not in an overt or blunt way, just the phrasing and descriptions chosen gave enough clues and detail for my imagination to be able to fill in the rest.
I cannot stress enough how good the main character and her interactions are with other entities for seeming life-like and making me as the reader invest in the book.
(Yes as with any book you can't flesh out every character, and I would have liked to know more about Detective Shaw, as he seems to play a big part in the "then" sections and later in the now story but I never felt like I understood the cops fully, contrasted to the other characters)
This more than anything made me read the whole book as fast as my free-time would let me.
Now for the downside, the characters and suspense are what makes this book great. It is a good plot,don't get me wrong, but other than the Irish setting and the obvious points of the crime and locale, too me it doesn't have much to set it apart from the crowd. It follows the usual pattern of serial killer and did he didn't he etc. that could be set in any location with a canal and produce the same story, other than the geographic links and the nature of the crime there isn't much to set the storyline apart from others in the genre(In my view). There's nothing wrong with it, just wasn't exceptional.
I don't want to leave a spoiler but I would encourage everyone to stick with it though, as I almost didn't after reading 30% of it, but it does then pick up, especially with the accompanying developing of characters. There are also some wonderful twists and changes of pace that I didn't see coming.