“I’m sorry, Avery. I love you, and we’ve been on some wild rides together. But this one might be too crazy for me to jump aboard.”
Victoria Ford, the chief suspect in a murder investigation, died when the Twin Towers fell on 9/11. Now, twenty years later, her remains have been identified, and Avery Mason, the journalist reporting on the story, realizes there is more to the case than anyone realized.
Guys, I really wanted to like this book. Though I felt iffy about 9/11 being consigned to a historical backdrop in a thriller, I found the blurb exciting. I love stories about cold case investigations and how (in books at least!) revisiting the case can stir up a whole lot of trouble.
The main character, Avery, is a very persistent woman, and I really enjoyed her focus on her career. Throughout the story she’s always scouting out leads and angles on the case for her television show, and I felt that I really was inside her brain in places. The plot itself was intricate, with a lot of moving parts, and I am impressed how the author fit all the pieces together.
But the major problem here is the plot as well – this book is swollen with it. There’s the Victoria Ford investigation, but also Avery’s past, and the latter played a much larger plot in the story than the blurb indicates. To be brief about it, she is the daughter of a top-tier white collar criminal and, years after she tried to put it behind her, he is making a return in her life. This plot-line takes up a good half of the book, figuring in the climax and leaving the Victoria Ford investigation’s conclusion languishing until the very end. Switching between plot-lines lowered the tension I felt as well.
I also did not much like the romance angle – while Walt is not an unlikeable character, the romance felt out of place and I could not tell what drew him and Avery together beyond that they found each other physically attractive.
I listened to this book in an audio format, and the narrator Vivienne Leheny does a fair job with it. Her voices were distinct, and I thought she did her male voices especially well. She was able to deliver on emotional dialogue when the book called for it.
Overall, this was a somewhat disappointing read, as I feel it did not deliver on the promises made in the blurb.
Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley. This is my honest and voluntary review.