The author reached out to me and offered me a copy of this book through NetGalley. Because I have received a free copy, it has in no way, influenced my opinion.
I read the premise and was really interested by the fact that it was a mystery. Who doesn't love a good mystery novel?! It started off pretty strong and I was intrigued. When the Laurie showed up is when things started to get a little repetitive and a bit boring. Really, most of this book could be summed up by the characters feelings. I feel like that's all I got.
For example, how many times do I need to be told that the Charles and Elaine have a happy marriage and she's an emotionless robot? How many times do I need to be told about his depression over Lorna's death? I started to just get annoyed with his obsession with Laurie. Okay, they look the same, so I get the hopefulness. It just got weird. Instead of being excited to learn more about Lorna's investigation, he was more happy to talk to Laurie.
I understand that Laurie is upset, but come on. She didn't really do anything to investigate this. She just took Charles word for it and played intern. She wasn't actively trying to look into her sisters life, to dig into everything. I feel like she was just expecting to wait on the Prime Minister to do it for her. For her being so adamant about it not being a suicide, she didn't do much to look into it.
I get that she tried to confuse us and make the killer be a big mystery but I'm confused about one thing. If Arthur took a gun to go after his girl, how did he know she was going to be in trouble?? He couldn't possibly know that when he left home and "wasn't going to let her get away," yet he showed up to save the day. So what WAS he going to do with that gun?! He just happened to have something fall into his lap to get the girl back. I think that saving her was not his intention, it couldn't have been, right? Even his mother thought so!
Something I did like about this book was the author's writing style. I liked how we got everybody's POV. Every character that had some part of this story had their opinion shown. Even if it was only once. You got to see how they felt and thought about the certain situation. So instead of doing what other authors do and alternate chapters, she does it right there in the middle of the chapter. It happens all the time.
One thing I didn't like about the style though was that it would change. It would alternate between the characters POV and then change to more of a narration. Like someone else was telling me the story. It would just happen suddenly and I felt like it took away from some of the story.
For this being advertised as an exciting mystery, it fell flat for me. I didn't get the action during the book, only in the last couple of chapters. Overall, it wasn't a bad read just not something that stands out for me. I give it 3 stars. Although, there were some things that bugged me, it kept me interested enough.
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