Happy Saturday Everyone,

It’s officially the weekend! And it’s Father’s Day weekend. I hope that you all have something lovely planned for tomorrow and enjoy spending some time with family.

Book 📖

Thank you to @LesleyPearse and @PenguinUKBooks for this advanced audio copy of Suspects in return for an honest review. Suspect is due to be published on 24th June 2021 and you can get a copy here.

Description 🔖

Nina and Conrad Best are thrilled to be moving into their new home on the quaint and family friendly Willow Close in Cheltenham however the day they move in isn’t as quaint as they would like. A resident is found dead nearby and they have been murdered.

The police start their investigations by interviewing all of the residents of Willow Close and it becomes apparent that there are many secrets hidden behind closed doors. The picture-perfect appearance isn’t what it seems to be.

General Thoughts 🤔

Reading the description of this book I held out hope that I was going to really enjoy it but early on, my hackles were raised. There is so much fat shaming in this story and I really don’t think that it was necessary or added to the story or the character development. It was unnecessary and didn’t sit well with me. The characters were pigeon holed into being glamorous and slim or fat and lazy. If it added to the plot in someway then maybe I would have felt differently.

I don’t expect every mystery thriller to catch me off-guard but I thought that this one was particularly predictable. I had my suspicions very early on about who had killed the Willow Close resident and it didn’t take much longer to be pretty certain about it. The plot felt lazy and unimaginative. With all of the characters that were involved, there was the potential to make it much more exciting by making someone else the murderer.

Characters 👬👭👫

Looping back to my general thoughts, the characters were so stereotypical that they became clichéd and lacked depth. Aside from that, I personally thought that there were way too many of them. I found it difficult to stay on track of who was who and which secrets belonged to which household. I appreciate that having so many suspects should have helped to sew the seed of doubt, but unfortunately I don’t think that that was achieved.

Writing Style ✍️

There was potential in this storyline and it could have been made so much more than it was. Instead I feel like the author stuck with the obvious choice and therefore I was unable to jump onto any sort of pace of tension that the book otherwise may have had.

Conclusion & Scoring 🎖️

I really don’t like writing less than positive reviews, but they happen and it would be unfair of me to not be honest about my thoughts. This book was unfortunately a miss for me which is a shame.

😍😍😩😩😩