Welcome to the second of my ‘Calendar Chaos’ posts, in which I take the books I received in my 2024 book advent – each cover representing a different period of time – and review them for you!
Up next in January is MONDAY and the book is Blue Monday by Nicci French.
Read on to find out more…
Blurb: Monday: five-year-old Matthew Faraday is abducted. His face is splashed across newspaper front pages. His parents and the police are desperate. Can anyone help find their little boy before it is too late?
Psychotherapist Frieda Klein just might know something.
One of her patients describes dreams of seizing a boy who is the spitting image of Matthew. Convinced at first the police will dismiss her fears out of hand, Frieda reluctantly finds herself drawn into the heart of the case. A previous abduction, from twenty years ago, suggests a new lead – one that only Frieda, an expert on the minds of disturbed individuals, can uncover.
Struggling to make sense of this terrifying investigation, Frieda will face her darkest fears in the hunt for a clever and brutal killer . . .
Review: It took me a little time to adjust to the writing style in this book, as it is told in a rather abrupt and distanced narrative tone and short chapters that sometimes feel cut-off before the end, as if many of the chapters had missing pages. Once I had got used to this though, the story was interesting and kept me hooked in.
All of the characters, from main character Frieda Klein to her colleagues, friends and family members, share qualities of being odd and/or detached, and/or hot messes… and that’s not even counting the patients that come to Frieda for psychological help!
Despite those two initial stumbling blocks to my immersion though, I ended up devouring the story whole, as I was desperate to know what happened to the two missing children and how Alan Dekker’s tortured dreams could possibly fit in to any of it. The plot takes several unexpected twists and turns, and culminates in a chilling finale that clearly leads the reader into the further books in the series.
And while I could be tempted to read more – for the crime psychology angle, which fascinates me, and to find out how that wider story arc is eventually resolved – I have to admit that on putting the book down I didn’t feel any urgency to immediately delve into the next story.
About the author:
Nicci French is the pseudonym of English husband-and-wife team Nicci Gerrard and Sean French, who write psychological thrillers together.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NicciFrenchOfficialPage
Twitter/X: https://x.com/FrenchNicci
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/NicciFrenchBooks/featured
