The epitome of a good thriller - when you can compare it to a Nandos.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Blurb:
Nobody cuts deeper than family...
Dr. Noah Alderman, a widower and single father, has remarried a wonderful woman, Maggie Ippolitti, and for the first time in a long time, he and his young son are happy. Despite her longing for the daughter she hasn’t seen since she was a baby, Maggie is happy too, and she’s even more overjoyed when she unexpectedly gets another chance to be a mother to the child she thought she'd lost forever, her only daughter Anna.
Maggie and Noah know that having Anna around will change their lives, but they would never have guessed that everything would go wrong, and so quickly. Anna turns out to be a gorgeous seventeen-year-old who balks at living under their rules, though Maggie, ecstatic to have her daughter back, ignores the red flags that hint at the trouble brewing in a once-perfect marriage and home.
Events take a heartbreaking turn when Anna is murdered and Noah is accused and tried for the heinous crime. Maggie must face not only the devastation of losing her daughter, but the realization that Anna's murder may have been at the hands of a husband she loves. In the wake of this tragedy, new information drives Maggie to search for the truth, leading her to discover something darker than she could have ever imagined
The Review
I really like Nandos (stick with me here, I'm not drunk again...) What's not to like? It doesn't cost you much, it's yummy chicken, you know exactly what you are going to get every time and it's quick to eat. No, it's not the kind of meal that you will remember eating in 6 months time, but it's so darn good while you do eat it, that the next day you find yourself saying to friends - 'I'd forgotten how much I enjoy Nandos!'
There really is a reason for this random introduction. This is exactly how I feel about a good mystery-thriller of this type. I forget how great a good one can be, how it will grab me by the jugular and drag me along for about 48 hours. Much like a Nandos fulfilling your need for 'chickeny goodness', it ticks all the right boxes and gives you that quick literary fix you've been after.
I've been reading a lot of hefty tomes recently. That's what I get for telling random people that I review books and inevitably get given lists of books that I *must* read, many of which are winners of prestigious literary awards. Which is great, I love it, but it has stopped me blazing through some great, if a little less high brow, new releases. And you can't keep eating heavy, indulgent, fancy pants meals all the time.
After Anna is my go-to type of book when I want to shut the world out. It's my indulgence. For others it's chick-lit, or action thrillers, or crime detective novels, for me it's got to be a great mystery thriller. And this is a GREAT one. It caught me from the very first page, with the set up of the step-father being on trial for Anna's murder. From then on it alternates between the 'After' which follows the trial from Noah's perspective as the accused and the 'Before', which tells Maggie's story as the mother reunited with her daughter after 17 years.
The story unfolds through these narratives and slowly all of the threads are pulled together. One slight criticism for me would be just how quickly the last quarter of the book played out. It was almost like the author was suddenly told that they had a word limit that they were getting close to and she hurried to tie everything up in as few words as possible. That aside, I loved the pacing in general, thought the characters and their relationships were well crafted and the story, if a little far fetched in places, had me hooked.
So this didn't reinvent the genre for me, but it did what it promised to do very well. It was a really satisfying return to the type of book I love to inhale. It was fast, twisty, kept you guessing and had a suitably satisfactory ending that tied everything up in a nice neat bow. I might not remember it very well in 6 months time and it wont make me ponder any great philosophical questions, but it was so much fun to read and I was totally absorbed from start to finish.
Big thanks to the Publisher and Netgalley for this preview copy in return for an honest review.
After Anna was published on 10th April 2018 by St. Martin's Press.
Comments