Reviews with content warning for Medical trauma - In the Blink of an Eye

Reviews tagging 'Medical trauma'

In the Blink of an Eye by Jo Callaghan

6 reviews

redheadbookgirl's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional informative inspiring mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

I saw John Marrs recommend this a while back so of course I had to read it! This book was INCREDIBLE 👏🏽 I was hooked from the very first page till the last.. the case, the team, the twists, the reasoning behind the crimes. It was so clever + engaging.

DCS Kat Frank was a brilliant MC; honest, stubborn + hard working, I couldn’t help warming to her + I think she was the perfect match for AIDE Lock, who was unintentionally witty + brutally unfiltered. It was strangely heartwarming to watch it learn about human emotion + develop a friendship of sorts with Kat.

The pacing was so fast and didn’t let up throughout, with anonymous chapters of a captured man interspersed and only increasing the tension. The plot was completely addictive: thrilling, unputdownable + very thought provoking. I thought the balance shown between human’s instinct + AI’s logic was perfectly done and showcased why both work well. I was kept guessing till the very end and my hunch was completely wrong!

The fact Callaghan wrote this just a couple of months after losing her husband, and was strong enough to write a similar circumstance into the plot, is awe-inspiring and all the more profound + made me quite emotional.

This is a fresh, original take on crime fiction + an INCREDIBLE debut (!) novel that I HIGHLY recommend 🙌🏽 I can’t wait to read book number two!

Content Warnings

scarlettreadsbooks's review against another edition

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mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Content Warnings

bookellys's review against another edition

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medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

I had mixed feeling about this book - I really liked the underlying missing person story line and how that all panned out, but I didn’t like the inclusion of AI. I think the book tried to call out the inherent racism and sexism in the police force, and how AI could be the answer to over come personal prejudice, but I don’t feel the AI story was very well thought through.

It failed to address that Lock’s creator had her own personal bias and prejudices which would inadvertently have played through into her creation. Nor did it recognise the fact that Lock would have been trained on police data from old cases, all of which would have been influenced by the personal prejudice of the police officers involved. AI is only as good as the data it is trained on and sadly a lot of the historic data would have been significantly influenced by the institutional sexism and racism in the force, thus ‘teaching’ the AI to do the same - so when Lock spits out all its facts and figures, they are based on data that has hidden biases. This is not addressed by the book, which instead positions AI an ethical, anti-corrupt being.

And on that note, I did not like how it personalised the AI. The hologram was unnecessary and the whole ‘looking around the room’ piece would have required a number of cameras for the AI to take in its surrounds, not just a wrist band.

All in all, the premise was good but I felt like the execution let it down, and that the author didn’t truly understand AI or address some of the key risks and concerns facing the modern world as this rapidly growing technology evolves.

Content Warnings