About The Truth Waits:
Anna has everything worked out – a successful company, all the comforts she needs and no ties. But when she stumbles across the body of a young girl on a deserted beach in Lithuania, everything changes.
Anna is compelled to uncover the story behind the tragedy, despite concern from her partner, Will. Everything points towards sex trafficking, but as she searches, her own deepest secrets start to surface.
When Will disappears without a trace, Anna is pulled further into the murky world of organised crime. Time is running out for them all, and there’s a killer out there who will stop at nothing.
Beard enthralls the reader in this fast-paced psychological crime thriller. Anna serves as the perfect power-house protagonist, her daring escapades leaving the reader questioning: how far should one go to solve a murder?
Review:
The Truth Waits is the first book by Susanna Beard that I’ve read, and I was not disappointed. This is a fast-paced crime thriller about sex trafficking.
When I started reading and found this book is written in third-person present tense, I wasn’t sure how easily I’d become caught up in the narrative. I love present tense, but third-person present tense has always been a hard read for me, and I’m not sure why. Yet I had no problems getting into this book. There’s something compelling and almost lyrical about the writing, and I just felt like I needed to read more and more every time I sat down to read “just a couple of chapters.”
What really makes this book is the characterisation. Anna is a great main character. She’s a work-obsessed business woman and it’s hinted early on that she has a dark secret. On the surface, she seems rather cold, but as you read, you discover hidden depths to her character. When her dark secret is revealed, it’s done so in a way that is still sensitive to the character and heart-wrenching for readers. Though the secret had the capability to paint her as a villain, Anna still doesn’t seem like a villain in the reader’s eyes, despite her secret, and I think the execution of it was beautifully done. She’s definitely the villain from another (off page) character, and it just proves that the protagonist and antagonist of a story very much depends on the point of view and narrator.
Our other main character is Will, a travel journalist. We start off not knowing much about him, and Beard cleverly builds the suspense as she has us questioning whether Will really is everything that he says he is, as Anna finds evidence to support both her theories (that he’s a sex trafficker and/or that he’s investigating the sex trafficking). This back-and-forth structure as Anna tries to make up her mind, made it a compelling read, and right from the start, I found Will to be an intriguing character.
The book begins with Anna finding the body of a sixteen-year-old girl on the beach not far from her hotel in Lithuania. What follows is a dark journey into the gritty world of sex trafficking as Anna tries to work out who murdered the girl, and struggles to trust those around her.
For me, the only negative point about this book was the ending. Although all the plot points are wrapped up in a satisfying way, it felt a little rushed in places. Anna almost seems to find out the answer too quickly, after spending so much of the book deliberating, and there are no huge twists in the final section—due to the large amount of back-and-forth worrying that Anna has as she suspects other characters, the ending confirms that the bad guy is one of the people she suspected. I was expecting there to be a reveal after this that someone else close to Anna was also involved, and I feel that would’ve just made this book have the edge.
Overall, this is an engaging crime thriller and well worth the read.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC of this book and for the publisher for inviting me to be part of the blog tour with this review.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
No comments:
Post a Comment