The combination of intriguing mystery and fleshed out and equally intriguing characters was superbly executed and really elevated this rating for me. A short review on this one (I have read too many books on holiday on top of a backlog of reviews I already have. After a young man is found murdered in a houseboat in London, it brings to the forefront three women who have unique and complicated connections to him.

Miriam is forever second-guessing the judgment of strangers who she knows see her as a lonely busybody, while Laura is chaotic and brittle-sounding, convinced that none of the calamities that befall her are ever her fault. The ingenious beginning snared me and I was held by the subtly powerful plot, such a difficult thing to do well and here, seemingly effortless. I found it a little confusing, in truth, though I confess I am easily lost if too much information is put on the table.Theo and Carla have an unhealthy marriage that appears on and off due to an accidental death of their 3 year old son left in the care of her sister Angela and her son Daniel.

her follow-up, Into the Water, was a much quieter release, and wasn't even a mystery, IMO; it was a character-driven investigation of a situation that happened to have a body count, in a similar vein to ivy pochoda's exquisite These Women. On her way to the bedroom, she stepped on her jacket, which she'd dropped in the hallway in her rush to get to the bathroom. Like the three parts of a braid, the stories of the three women in A Slow Fire Burning come together and are interwoven into one. We are disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising. This was my third Paula Hawkins book and while I found it somewhat slow going, the writing was superb.

The barge was a mess-paint peeling, lintels rusted, chimney all a skew-while he himself looked much too clean for canal life. A Slow Fire Burning is a hugely gripping, character-based thriller, with great writing and brilliant twists. A Slow Fire Burning is a hugely satisfying, brilliantly crafted novel about the entanglement of betrayal and retaliation, the damage of loss, and how tragedy reverberates in ways we can never expect. I inhaled this novel, a gripping exploration of the damage that secrets can do, Hawkins' writing draws you in from the first word and refuses to let you go until the last.

It was a book that exposed the way the sympathies of the reader might be manipulated, laying bare how quickly we jump to conclusions about guilt and innocence, power and responsibility. As if someone else wrote it, chapter 30 was my favourite one, where I asked why couldn’t have been like that throughout the book?Paula Hawkins bestselling debut novel The Girl on The Train, which has since been given the Hollywood treatment starring Emily Blunt, sold 23 million copies. She ran the tips of her wrinkled fingers back and forth over her beautiful, bone-white scars: hip, thigh, shoulder, back of skull. The author decided to create a slow burn mystery which could be helpful to build high tension and increase the expectations of the readers as the pace gets faster at the second half. A truly satisfying, multi-layered maze of a mystery with a cast of flawed characters so real I'm still thinking of them days after I turned the last page.