When Anna McDonald’s normal morning routine of gathering gym kits and making packed lunches for her children whilst listening to a true-crime podcast is interrupted by a knock at the door, she opens it to reveal her best friend, Estelle, stood there. They’re not due to leave for their exercise class just yet, but as she turns to her husband making his way down the stairs with a suitcase in hand, Estelle’s early appearance is explained. Her husband is leaving her. For her best friend. He’s taking the girls with him.
Left in despair, Anna returns to the podcast to drown out her feelings, little does she know she’s about to become more absorbed in the story than usual.
A yacht is sunk off the coast of France, 3 victims on board, the chef successfully caught and imprisoned for the murders. Through her daze Anna realises she knew one of the victims, in a past life. A life that was blighted by power and corruption.
She can’t help but throw herself into the crime investigation, taking her across Europe and face to face with a shadow from her past that could bring her carefully crafted life crashing around her.
I’ve been waiting to read this book for quite a while, since it was a Reese’s Book Club pick in December. I was thrilled to pick it up in the Kindle sale, however I had a long list of ARCs to get through for NetGalley. Due to the UK pandemic lock down and the unexpected time off work, I have managed to get up-to-date on my reading list for review and have found a pocket of time where I am able to read some of my purchased titles. Conviction was high on that list.
I haven’t read anything by this author before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I always find branching out to a new author can be risky for me, as I find some writing styles particularly difficult to focus on. Luckily, I found Denise Mina’s style to be extremely easy and free flowing and I happily breezed through the chapters.
The main protagonist, Anna, was fairly likeable. At times it was difficult to feel empathetic towards her as a lot of her story was shrouded in mystery. However, as the story unfolded the more I felt for Anna and the challenges she had, and was, experiencing. I thought the relationship between herself and Fin was so funny at times, they had really great banter, and this added a lightness to a somewhat dark story.
The story was told via 3 narrative strands, the presents day, Anna’s remembering of the past and the podcast. I felt the podcast sections were a little slow, but in general the story progressed quite quickly which I enjoyed.
Since finishing this book I have seen several negative reviews that claim this title was “too unrealistic”. Sometimes I can relate to this, however, in this setting with murder and mafia type baddies I thought it was a bonus for it to be a little over the top. It is fiction after all, if I wanted a real life story I’d read the news.
The only thing that let this book down for me, and I’m sure it had little to do with the author, was all the typos and bad editing. There were a few sections and sentences where I ha to reread them, which ruined the flow a little. All in all though this was an entertaining read for me, and I will look for other titles from this author in the future.
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