An ok read

This suited my need for a fairly low demand book….I sometimes need one of these as a quick read after I have done a fe heavier or complex books. It did what it needed to,

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Enthralling

Captured my interest from the start and held it to the end. Tragic stiry though.

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2 people found this helpful

Preposterous claptrap

Started off well but degenerates into nonsense. I have really enjoyed all of Katerina Diamond's other books but this is very disappointing. Sloppy and insulting.

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4 people found this helpful

Great twist

Really enjoyed this book. Although I found the start a little slow the twists and turns soon got me hooked.

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1 person found this helpful

Great Story

Great story. Gripping from start to finish. Lovely descriptions of Sidmouth x x x x

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Don’t bother!

I’d read good reviews of this book. I can only imagine they were written by people who can suspend their disbelief to a most incredible level.
I finished this book. It was like watching one of those terrible films that you keep thinking is going to get better soon. It didn’t.
The drawing together of threads and the ending is just all so unbelievable.
I am going to ask for a refund of my credit on this book.

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5 people found this helpful

Beyond belief

Poor and irritating. Struggled thru to the end just to see how it would pull together .... ridiculous ending.

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3 people found this helpful

Bad book and this review is spoilery

This was a pretty terrible book. The prose wasn't too bad but there wasn't much else to say about it that was good. This review is fairly spoilery because the book was so bad I can't express an opinion without hinting at some things.

Firstly, an hour in I clocked one of the latter "reveals" but doubted myself because it was too ridiculous. To do what the main character did would need legal stuff, paperwork, NI numbers and a police investigation. Teachers would be involved. It was a crazy plot point.

Secondly the main characters are painfully stupid. If you suspected, and had evidence, that someone was a serial killer would you (A) call the police or (B) invite them to tea, tell them you think they're a serial killer and have them laugh it off then all go into different rooms so he can kill you one by one? If you picked (A) you're more intelligent than this character. If you saw someone being strangled by an unarmed man would you (A) try to stop that or (B) have a casual conversation about how they ended up becoming a serial killer as they kill someone. If you picked (A) you're more moral than the protagonist too.

The setting isn't particularly well described but the author grew up there so probably didn't realise how weird some of the references are without context.

Then there's this dumb framing device of two POVs: one in a then timestream, one in a now. The problem is nothing really happens in the now timestream until the very end. All the interest and excitement is in the then timestream. This means half of the already boring book feels even more boring, especially as the now timeline is constantly saying things like "That bit of info tells me more than she thinks because of what happened in my past... before it all fell apart..." Argh.

People, also don't talk like the ones in this story at all. If my daughter was missing and some randomer came up to me at my work and said "Tell me about the night she disappeared, do you remember what happened?" I'd tell them to fuck off not go through a police interview style discussion. Same with some teens she finds "Hi. You don't know me but were you friends with the missing girl? Oh, you were. Great. Can you tell me what she was like and everything you remember about her disappearance?" No way are teens going to respond positively and in detail to that. It was like the protagonist was treated like a police officer/Catholic priest at confession.

The protagonist is also an alcoholic and this interferes with her investigation a lot. This makes it exceptionally difficult to empathise with an already bizarre character. If a person's life depended on me I wouldn't be getting drunk. And saying that I just realised she could have saved the person days earlier while knowing she was likely being tortured.

The narration isn't anything special either. It's very slow and plodding with several sentence repetitions (3:21:01 & 5:12:44 that I recorded).

Honestly, this book was just bad. I had Teacher by Katerina Diamond in my wishlist before I read this. It's not there anymore.

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2 people found this helpful