Published By: Michael Joseph
Pages: 400
Released On: 03/07/2025
Anna and Reid weren’t meant to be, apparently. She’s a fiery American journalist; he’s a stoic British detective – it was nice while it lasted, and then it really wasn’t.
And Anna is over it now anyway. She’s on the scent of a career-making story – a suspicious death amongst the cloistered elite world of Cambridge University, with a slice of police corruption too.
It’s just, the more she investigates, the more there’s only one person she wants to talk to about it. She starts writing Reid a long sprawling email – it’s not like she’s ever planning to send it.
Until suddenly, she’s in desperate trouble. The problem with chasing a killer is that sometimes, you run right into them.
And the only detective she can trust with her life, is the one who broke her heart…
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and Michael Joseph for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
I have only read one Gytha Lodge book – Little Sister – and I own a copy of A Killer in the Family – so I had really high hopes for this one but it didn’t live up to what I was hoping.
I found the opening quite good, and I’d read the first 15-20% really quickly, but then it fell quite quickly in quality for me.
It is a very slow burn, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I kept looking for that hook.
It was hard to get into. It’s not written in the traditional format. Reid’s sections are written in the normal third person narrative, while Alex’s are written in the first person because she’s writing an email to Reid. I prefer third person generally, but in thrillers I like the first person, and so this gives us a bit of both, but it wasn’t as smooth to read as if it was just one type of narrative throughout.
Having finished it, I’m not sure the format worked with this story or vice versa. It lacked the urgency that thrillers – and Gytha’s works – normally have, which was a bit disappointing. I enjoyed the story, it’s not that it wasn’t a good story, but it lacked that fast-paced thrill I was expecting.
I am all for a slow born but this was too slow. I know it’s more of an investigative thriller than a blood and guts and murdery type of thriller, but I felt it dragged from about 1/4 through. I didn’t feel on edge, I wasn’t on the edge of my seat, I wasn’t looking over my shoulder. It was a nice interesting story, but didn’t quite hit the ‘thriller’ for me.
There’s not much in the way of character interactions for me. Yes, in Anna’s sections we do see her interacting with others, but it’s all sort of done retrospectively. It’s very much a two-character story, but it was difficult to actually figure out if I liked them or not because you don’t get to know them very well so it was hard to have any opinion on them.
I also found the ending a bit too rushed and complicated and I can’t say I was particularly satisfied by it.
As bizarre as this will sound, it was far too heavy on the detail and yet I realised I didn’t actually know what was going on. It’s simultaneously heavy and light on detail.
Overall, I’d say I still enjoyed it. Gytha does know how to create a story, weaving together lots of threads and bringing it to a conclusion, and her stories are unique, but this one fell flat. It didn’t give me much thrill, it was too slow and I didn’t feel anything for the characters.
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