Evening Everyone,

Happy Sunday, happy Mother’s Day and happy first day of British Summer Time. Although I was slightly gutted to have lost an hour in bed this morning I am more than willing to get over that for the later nights. I love this time of year when the sun starts to peep out and I can gradually ditch some layers and transition from boots to sandals. This is my first spring in the cottage so I’m super excited to get some gardening done and create a little reading sanctuary for myself.

Book 📖

Thank you to @gillperduewrite and @PenguinUKBooks for this advanced copy of The Interview in return for an honest review. The Interview was published on 24th March 2022 and you can get a copy here.

Description 🔖

Detective Laura Shaw is successful, happy and accomplished. She has a great job, fantastic husband and an adorable baby daughter. She is well respected amongst her colleagues and is known to be able to get even the most vulnerable of witnesses to open up.

When Laura and her colleague Niamh are sent to interview 14 year old Jenny, everything changes. Jenny is an assault victim who has been taken into hospital covered in blood, but the blood is not her own. The poor girl will only talk in fairytales and refuses to give Laura or Niamh any solid information.

Laura behaves strangely during the interviews and outside of the interview room. It appears that something about this particular witness has triggered her and Niamh is left bewildered, trying to hold everything together. Laura is on the edge of a breakdown and disaster and faces a very difficult decision; is everyone’s life really worth saving?

General Thoughts 🤔

This book gripped me right from the start as it jumps straight into the drama. I liked that a lot as it got me turning the pages and wanting to know more and more about what had happened to Jenny. I quite liked the fairytale way in which I had to try and piece together her story. Even though it was pretty obvious to work out what Jenny had been through, it was interesting to hear it from her subconscious.

As much as I enjoyed the interviews with Jenny and the tension created by Laura falling apart during them, I was a little disappointed to not leave the interviews more. I would have liked to have known even more about the background of the various characters and maybe to have been given more detail about what had happened in the run up to Jenny finding herself in hospital.

Characters 👫👭👬

There weren’t many characters in the book but there were enough for me to have likes and dislikes. The easy one for me was Laura. I couldn’t get along with this character, however hard I tried. I completely appreciate that the woman had her own demons and problems, but I thought she should have taken responsibility for that and stepped aside if she was not able to handle the job she had been given.

I really liked Niamh. She seemed incredibly smart and was able to play different roles to achieve an objective. I think that the interviews would have gone very differently if Niamh had been leading as opposed to Laura. Niamh struck me as a bad ass side kick that really should have been the star but was loyal to her friend and colleague.

Writing Style ✍️

The whole book is written from three points of view; Laura’s, Jenny’s and Niamh’s. I really enjoyed the way the author told the story through these three women, however I thought it would have been really interesting to have heard snippets of the story from some of the other characters.

I liked that the chapters were short and snappy as it kept the pace of the book going and had me on edge. It felt like I was reading against a timer that was quickly running out.

Conclusion & Scoring 🎖

This was an enjoyable thriller and was a relatively quick read. The story was a really good concept, but I think that it could have been taken a little bit further and turned a good book into a great one. I did enjoy the tone of the book and the writer’s style, so I will definitely look out for more from Gill Perdue.

😍😍😍😩😩