Saturday, November 18, 2017

Elizabeth Haynes - Dark Tide

Genevieve has finally achieved her dream: to leave the stress of London behind and start a new life aboard a houseboat in Kent. She’s found the perfect vessel: Revenge of the Tide. She already feels less lonely; as if the boat is looking after her.
But the night of her boat-warming party, a body washes up, and to Genevieve’s horror, she recognizes the victim. She isn’t about to tell the police, though; hardly anyone knows about her past as a dancer at a private members’ club, The Barclay. The death can’t have anything to do with her. Or so she thinks...
Soon, the lull of the waves against Revenge feels anything but soothing, as Genevieve begins to receive strange calls and can’t reach the one person who links the present danger with her history at the club. Fearing for her safety, Genevieve recalls the moment when it all started to go wrong: the night she saw her daytime boss in the crowd at The Barclay...
Dark, sexy, and exquisitely chilling, Dark Tide is another superb mystery from acclaimed rising star Elizabeth Haynes.
 


Comment: I liked the previous books I've read by this author, so I got this one months ago and mow I finally picked it up. I think that this one ended up being the weaker of the three for me, but I liked spending time reading, that's for sure.

In this book we meet Genevieve, a young woman who is living in a boat called Revenge of the Tide, a boat she managed to afford because she worked as a dancer at a gentleman's club for a while. Things weren't always easy there, though, and Genevieve left when she could. 
Now her supposedly easy life of restoring the boat is in danger because at the night of her welcoming party to the boat, a body is found near her boat, in the water. She finds the body an realizes it's her former friend and co worker Caddy, from the club. 
Can her past life and her current one be so close already?

I liked this book simply because I seem to enjoy the author's "voice" a lot, so it was quite an easy task to just read and keep going.
However, when thinking about general terms, I do think this story wasn't as well done when it comes to pacing and suspense. I mean, it was great that the mystery surrounding Genevieve wasn't as strong as not to be bearable but when everything is solved, things seem a little too plain and that brings the plot's tension down, which can be sort of anti climatic.
The pacing also felt a bit unbalanced because at the end things just don't seem to matter much, which can make the whole story seem to lack importance, so what was the purpose...

I actually liked how we could alternate what was happening now in Genevieve's life and how her work at the club begun, so innocently, up to the point where things are now. I guess this is part of the suspense element and while I don't mind much, it does feel a bit weirdly paced.
Genevieve seems a good heroine but some of her current choices (I mean the current time, when she's fixing the boat and dealing with the aftermath of leaving the club) don't seem to fit what her personality has been like previously but maybe this is just me being picky.

The love interest isn't well developed, I think. I can understand the need to keep things almost opaque, like looking through a glass so that our impressions aren't immediate or easy but this means that at the end, when the book is ending and we are waiting for the finale to bring something, the resolution seemed untimely and difficult to accept, considering how the plot developed regarding the main characters. Everything was a little bit unsolved and lacked power.

Despite the things I'd change, I still liked to read this. I had no trouble reading nor finding the will to carry on and this can always be something to add to the plus side of things.
I'll keep trying other books by the author because her work has a lot of good element for me, maybe just not always dealt with in the best way.
Grade: 7/10

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