It’s every parents nightmare.
Your happy, funny, innocent son commits a terrible crime: murdering a complete stranger.
You don’t know who.
You don’t know why.
You only know your teenage boy is in custody – and his future is lost.
Somewhere in the past lie the answers, and you don’t have a choice but to find them…
This book was chosen by a new book club I joined recently, and I have to admit that I hadn’t heard of it before it was put forward by another member. The blurb says it all – so far, so intruiging. But I found that this was one of those books where the blurb did not do the story credit.
It started off well, but the tempo just carried on picking up from there with more and more clues coming at you as the book progressed. I was hooked – did that last clue really mean what she thought she meant? Surely so-and-so isn’t involved? Surely this isn’t going where she thinks it is?
Some people in my book club have commented that it is a little disconcerting reading it backwards, but I love it – it reminds me of ‘A Spark Of Light’ by Jodi Piccoult, and I enjoy the way that early details learnt late in the plot can change the concepts and misconceptions from the story so far, changing the perspective to enrich the story.
It’s also been commented that nothing really seems to happen, and I must agree that I felt a little like that at times, until you get to later (or earlier) in the plot and finally learn the significance of things from earlier (or later) in the story. Personally I enjoyed it and found it a rewarding slow burner.
I really don’t want to give away too much because I was pleasantly surprised by the twists and tempo of the book – I definitely recommend it to crime lovers, but unfortunatly cannot lend you my copy since I have agreed to a (very) short-term ban on buying more books and read this in (gasp) kindle version.
It didn’t hurt half as much as I expected it to, and after I’d stopped accidentally swiping back a page in the middle of a sentence, it was reasonably easy to read. It also didn’t take away from the suspence in the way that I expected it to, which was another pleasant surprise.
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