Well, that was an epic last 20%!! I was going to give this 3.5 stars, until I got to the last fifth of this book, now its a solid 4 stars! That twist was insane!! I loved it!
You can tell that Tremayne has done his homework here. The Dartmoor beauty shines through the pages. So much detail, that you feel like you are there on those windswept moors, trudging through those bogs and taking in the natural beauty.
I am Devon born and bred, so when I realised this book had so much Devon in it I was definitely going to read it. I love connecting with a book in that way – where you know the place that is being talked about. It makes you feel a bit more involved, like this book was written for me.
The writing style is easy to read, it flows well, and I found myself being swept along with the the story because it was not a hardship to physically read it.
The characters are all well fleshed out. Lyla is a lovely little character to read about. Again there has been a good amount of research into the traits exhibited by Lyla and her undiagnosed aspergers.
So we start our story on Dartmoor. Kath and Adam are married with a daughter, Lyla. Now usually in there, you’d put ‘happily married’, or something along those lines, and they are happy, according to Kath, in the first part of the book. Then we get into the nitty gritty of what the story actually is. Kath was involved in an accident- she skidded on some ice, and her car went nose first into the reservoir, where she nearly drowned and was in a coma for a little while. While Kath has some brain damage, she is luckier than most and only has, hopefully short term memory loss. Well, that is what Kath believes happened….
Adam is having a hard time dealing with Kath since the accident, and Kath has no idea why. After an episode in the forest, Adam decides it is time to get Kath’s sister in law (the psychologist) over, to explain to Kath what actually happened that night….
I enjoyed reading about the beautiful landscape, understanding the roughness of the moors, and as a backdrop to the story, it worked wonderfully. I would read another book by this author just because of his detailed descriptions of the surroundings.
The story has a good pace for most of the book, we slowly uncover bits and pieces about what happened that night up at Burrator. Perhaps it gets a little slow in the middle, but by the end we have definitely picked up pace and I raced through the ending! It was intense, scary, thrilling. I could feel my heart beating faster and in fact looked at my FitBit and as expected my pulse was around 99bpm 🙂
Anywho, thoroughly recommended, thanks NetGalley for the free copy to honestly review! THAT TWIST! 🙂
Becca x
The Beautiful Book Break 