Book review - I let you go - Clare Mackintosh

I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


"In a split second, Jenna Gray's world descends into a nightmare. Her only hope of moving on is to walk away from everything she knows to start afresh. Desperate to escape, Jenna moves to a remote cottage on the Welsh coast, but she is haunted by her fears, her grief and her memories of a cruel November night that changed her life forever."

This seems to be a love it or hate it book. I'm ambivalent. It is a bit slow to start and then along came "the" twist. I didn't see it coming and found myself going back to see how I'd missed it. It really is a book of two halves and the back story of the main character Jenna makes for some uncomfortable reading, especially when told through her former partner's viewpoint. 

My main observation is that for a debut novel the author is trying to cover too many things and therefore some of them aren't done very well. There is a lot about police procedure, clearly, as a former policewoman, something the author is comfortable with. But that gets a bit boring and the interaction between the two main police officers is an unnecessary distraction. 

This is no literary masterpiece but doesn't warrant, in my opinion, some of the very negative reviews it's received.

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