This book had so much potential for me. I loved the premise and I was excited to read it. It sounded like it was going to be quite the nail bitter and I think the cover has a lot of visual interest to grab readers right away.
I love books like this where the main character is a suspect in the murder of a complete stranger. For some reason that troupe always draws me in because that has got to be someone’s worst nightmare.
I mean, I don’t know what I would do if I was being treated as a person of interest in a murder of a person I had never met before. So right away this one sounded so amazing to me and I couldn’t wait to crack it open.
Summary
The new thriller from E. G. Scott follows a woman looking for answers after her boyfriend goes missing and a corpse appears that implicates her in the murder of a woman she never met.
Charlotte, a midthirties Long Island woman, has felt so alone since her promising career in neuroscience imploded. But she has an online support group for trauma survivors; she has Rachel, a friend who has seen her through the worst of it; and now she also has Peter, a mysterious new boyfriend who has asked that their budding romance remain a total secret.
That is why she is too scared to report his disappearance to the authorities when he vanishes without a word.
Weeks later, police contact her to make an ID on a body and she fears the worst for her missing beau. Instead, she arrives at the morgue and feels a terrible relief when she sees a woman she has never met before on the table in front of her. But relief is replaced by confusion, then terror, when Charlotte realizes she has become a person of interest.
Why did Jane Doe have Charlotte listed as her emergency contact? Was it revenge or a warning? And where exactly does Peter factor into all this? As Charlotte becomes the prime murder suspect, she enters into a race against the clock to find truth about the dead woman and the connections they shared. But what she discovers is beyond anything she could have ever imagined (summary from Goodreads)
Review
I have to say, I don’t know that I loved this one in the way that I had hoped. Don’t get me wrong the story itself was twisty and interesting and I did stay up reading so I could find out what happened in the end. For me though, I struggled with some of the mechanics of the book. The dialogue didn’t read smoothly for me at parts for some reason. This book is written by two people, a man and a woman who have been friends for many years. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t, in this one I think that it was one of the reasons that the book didn’t seem to flow in the way that I had hoped. It felt a little disjointed in spots but not overall if that makes sense.
I haven’t read anything by these authors before, I would consider reading more by them in the future though even though the book felt a little disjointed and I will tell you why—I thought there were plenty of twists for avid thriller fans to enjoy. It had potential and a great story overall, I just felt like maybe it would have been a better story by one author.
this one really did hook me from the beginning though. I liked the idea of the main character being the emergency contact for this random woman she didn’t know. I think that alone would draw readers in, not to mention some of the other things like the boyfriend who wanted their relationship kept secret. Lots of things to make readers uneasy but in a good way.
If you are a thriller fan and love lots of action, then I think you will enjoy this one. The characters are developed and interesting, but it’s the twists that the story takes that I found most interesting. I am looking forward to more books by this team even if this one needed a little polishing in the dialogue, it really has all the right ingredients, just needs a little refining to make it a truly great read! Get this one on your radar if you love thrillers!
Book Info and Rating
Hardcover, 384 pages
Published August 4th 2020 by Dutton Books
ISBN1524744557 (ISBN13: 9781524744557)
Free review copy provided by publisher, Dutton Books, in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own and in no way influenced.
Rating: 3 stars
Genre: thriller, mystery, suspense
The Lit Bitch 