Reviews with content warning for Dementia - Beneath Devil's Bridge

Overall, this book is exciting enough, and provided an enjoyable murder mystery that kept me entertained until the end. I thought the plot was pretty well done, with a few exceptions (see below); the dual timelines were also handled well enough, although it did make things awkward in some respects. However, the writing was not up to par for me, so that brought it down a lot in my view.

We follow two characters from a first-person perspective, in two timelines: First, we have Trinity, a true crime podcaster investigating a murder from 24 years before. Second, we have Rachel, the main detective on the case, whose story is told both in the present day and at the time of the investigation. There are also occasional chapters with an omniscient narrator that briefly explain the reactions of other characters in the town.

Right from the beginning, I was not impressed with the writing in this book. The dialogue was often quite awkward, and I often found myself thinking, "no one would speak like this." This awkwardness also spilled over into non-dialogue descriptions, since everything was written in the first person, so it should have been written in such a way that it could be believable as the characters' internal dialogue, which it wasn't (ex. "I find myself falling into myself and going quiet.").

Certain strange descriptions were very much overused, particularly in relation to time (I was so sick of hearing about "time stretching", and every time a photograph was mentioned, there was some cliche description about it being "frozen in time" or some such). Example: "Time elongates and shimmers." (What? I guess this is meant to indicate a tense silence, but very weird.)

In addition, there were WAY too many sentence breaks throughout, especially in the more suspenseful sections, which led to the writing feeling very choppy in parts. (Example: "I hesitate. Nod. And come to my feet." Why three separate sentences here???)

The dual timelines sometimes led to awkward sentences that served to situate us in the timeline, but were often repetitive or unrealistic as someone's internal dialogue (ex. "Or perhaps I'm just unwell after the long day yesterday that started with the autopsy and ended with my fight with Maddy.") And then there were some sentences that were just plain awkward. (Ex: "Pratima died two years ago. She choked on food in a restaurant. Perhaps it was because nothing was easy for her to swallow after their baby girl was brutally assaulted and killed." Yikes.)

The reason I kept reading was because I wanted to know what happened, and overall, the plot was worthwhile. I thought a very minor romantic subplot was unnecessary and poorly set up

(the romantic connection between Trinity and Gio, specifically. I felt I didn't know very much about Gio at all, and their whole connection (and, honestly, maybe his entire character?) felt pretty random and had nothing to do with the plot anyway)

. I also felt that the vibe of the very end was not realistic. I don't mean how the mystery itself was resolved, but the reactions of the characters to that ending.

It seemed overly optimistic to assume that all the townspeople involved would completely come around to Trinity and her project so suddenly, and that "the truth set them free" to such an extent that they were completely happy-go-lucky about the whole thing immediately after the podcast wrapped up.

Overall, this was a fine pick for Amazon First Reads, and I enjoyed it, but I probably wouldn't recommend it too strongly over other books, if that makes sense.

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