Good Morning All,

Happy Sunday! I hope you’re all having a marvellous weekend. I’ve had a very slow one so far. I did a few bits and bobs around the house yesterday but that’s pretty much as far as it’s gone. I haven’t worked out since Friday so I need to get back onto that today. Aside from that I’ll be doing a whole lot of nothing and most likely getting onto reading something else.

Book 📖

If you follow my blog, you’ll have seen that I have reviewed two of the five books in the DI Fawley series by @CaraHunterBooks but oddly, the most recent two. I was back and forth with myself about whether or not I should go backwards and read the first three but finally decided to go for it. I’ve really enjoyed the last two so why not?! So I got into Close to Home.

Description 🔖

Eight year old Daisy Mason disappears from a party at her home and nobody saw a thing. A lot of residents from their quiet street were in attendance, but none of her family or friends have any information to give DI Fawley and his investigation team. Which likely means that somebody is lying and DI Fawley knows too well that most of the time, that someone is close to the victim.

The Oxford team have to race against the clock to try and find Daisy Mason alive, but the longer the investigation goes on, the less likely that becomes.

General Thoughts 🤔

I worried that by reading the first book in the series I was going to be going over some old ground and reading stuff that I already knew about the Oxford team but this really wasn’t the case. Apart from the odd minor and irrelevant thing, there was nothing in this book to suggest that I had gone back in time so to speak. It just proved to me how awesome it is that this series really can be read as standalone books.

I loved the case and storyline in this book. The circumstances surrounding Daisy’s disappearance don’t add up right from the very beginning and there are so many loose ends in the family’s story that it’s difficult to know what are lies and what is truth. This only makes for a rollercoaster investigation and lots of very quick reading to find out more detail. The ending was wow. It was one of those that I did not see coming but when it did, I could have kicked myself. How I didn’t predict it is testament to some great writing.

Characters 👭👬👫

I love this team of detectives. I love all of their characters and their relationships with one another. It was great to go backwards and read about them in this first book with the benefit of knowing how much they develop and mature in the later books.

As far as the other characters went, I don’t know why but I always felt so sorry for Daisy’s father; Barry. I felt like he was a terrible person who’d made some really poor decisions in his life, but I never thought he was a killer. I never warmed to the mother; Sharon. She was cold from the very beginning and very obviously had issues of her own, but again, I didn’t think that she was a killer either.

Writing Style ✍️

I think book series can go one of two ways; they either start off with a bang and then progressively lose their magic or they start off mediocre and then gain momentum. I was pleased to find that this book was neither of these and was very much on par with the later books in the series.

Like the other books, I loved the mix of social media posts in the story. It is a fantastic way of adding wider context to the story. This definitely wasn’t a warm up to the rest of the series and the storyline was tense, twisty and had a fantastic bombshell at the end.

Conclusion & Scoring 🏅

I loved this and I’m so glad I made the decision to go back and read it. As I mentioned in my review of The Whole Truth, the series has been picked up for a Television series and I cannot wait to get through the second and third books prior to watching. I’ll add a category for the DI Fawley series on my blog so that if you’re interested in reading all of the reviews, please keep an eye out for that.

😍😍😍😍😍