Thursday 28 December 2017

Book Review: Close To Home by Cara Hunter


Close To Home follows Detective Inspector Adam Fawley and his search for missing 8 year old Daisy. As is often the case, the kidnapper may be closer to home than everyone thinks, and Adam is tasked with finding out who lying.

Adam Fawley is a dynamic leading man. He's charismatic, likable and obviously good at his job. I liked that. Too many times in novels like this we see police officers who are so incompetent its a miracle they even catch the suspects. I was happy to see this was not the case in this book.

The other characters in this were all a little annoying and unlikable. Daisy's mother doesn't seem to care that her daughter's gone missing, and her father is more concerned with 'keeping up appearances' than actually trying to find his child. As the story continues, we see why the parents are acting like this, and the reasoning behind their behaviors is explained well - but I just still didn't like them. As we see Daisy's backstory unfold and we see a precocious intelligent little girl, I couldn't even bring up any feelings for her. I had no sympathy for any of them, and that made it difficult for me to care.

The story itself is also a little all over the place with flashbacks to back fill and flesh out the main characters and develop their history and significance to the case. This meant the plot jumped around at times, and disrupted the flow of the story. I'm not a fan of this type of story telling personally. I like a more linear approach. I also would have appreciated less of the police reports which seemed to reiterate or repeat information the reader already knew, making the plot a little too long winded.

Look, I'm very picky with my contemporary thrillers. I like something a little out of the ordinary, and something that's going to really shock and surprise me. Unfortunately, I think this subject matter is very common at the moment, with a flood of novels relating to missing children etc. and I think in some parts the novel suffers because of this. I didn't find it particularly original or griping enough at all - and the ending requires a large amount of suspension in belief, and made no real sense to me.

Unfortunately not for me.

Close To Home is available to purchase now from: Amazon

2 STARS

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