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energyrae's review against another edition
5.0
Ten years later, Deacon and Isabel are married with an 8-year-old daughter, Lauren. Having learned from their past, they are hypervigilant about fires. They practice fire drills. Isabel is a bit overprotective of Lauren, but she feels she has a good reason. But that makes Lauren a bit of a loaner, drawn to any bit of attention she receives. And that attention may just be their downfall. Angel Dust is intense and fast-paced, a great read!
secre's review against another edition
2.0
Angel Dust starts off relatively strong, although a little bit fanciful. Unfortunately, whilst this was a fairly quick read I found it relied too heavily on those less realistic aspects and let itself down badly around half way through with the perspective change that really didn’t bring anything to the novel other than bulking it out significantly. I’ll admit, I also picked this up expecting it to be a standalone and it really, really isn’t. There’s a lot of background from the previous book that isn’t particularly well explained and I definitely felt like I’d missed some critical context.
Isobel is propelled into a nightmare when her daughter Lauren is kidnapped, apparently taken in front of her very eyes not far from the school. But Isobel has a history with the police and her report isn’t taken all too seriously; she was a prime suspect for a series of fires prior to Lauren’s birth and has logged twelve calls to the police already reporting her daughter missing. To make matters worse, the police officer who was working the arson case is now in charge of her daughters kidnapping case and he really doesn’t trust Isobel. He didn’t manage to pin the arsons on her, but he’s determined to prove that she had something to do with her daughters disappearance. It isn’t long before Isobel takes matters into her own hands… particularly as she has a keen suspicion about who is responsible for her daughters kidnapping.
For the first half of the novel, this somehow feels fast paced, even though it doesn’t actually go anywhere. There’s a lot of police interviews, a car chase and two parents wracking their brains for anything they can do to find their daughter. There were real issues with realism, but I could feel the anxiety and the suspense.. Then at around the half way point the perspective changes and it all fell apart. At least a quarter of the book is then from Lauren’s perspective and, honestly, it’s a pointless addition that adds nothing other than to the page count.
That alone would have been enough to drop this down to three stars. However, when combined with the very real issues with believability, my rating dropped further. It’s difficult to describe without spoilers, and I really hate spoilers. So, staying vague, I struggled with the timeline and whilst it ended up making sense, the ‘coincidental’ bit could have been cut and it would have made for a more streamlined and believable plot. The police investigation stretched credibility as I doubt an officer with a known prior bias against the family would be permitted to run the investigation and finally Isobel’s own investigation was at once both too long winded and too simple; things just seemed to fall into her lap and the way some of it does makes me question how the police didn’t have that relevant information in advance.
So, this was a quick and easy read that was fairly well written, but the sudden perspective shift and the serious glaring holes in believability let it down significantly which is a shame.
Isobel is propelled into a nightmare when her daughter Lauren is kidnapped, apparently taken in front of her very eyes not far from the school. But Isobel has a history with the police and her report isn’t taken all too seriously; she was a prime suspect for a series of fires prior to Lauren’s birth and has logged twelve calls to the police already reporting her daughter missing. To make matters worse, the police officer who was working the arson case is now in charge of her daughters kidnapping case and he really doesn’t trust Isobel. He didn’t manage to pin the arsons on her, but he’s determined to prove that she had something to do with her daughters disappearance. It isn’t long before Isobel takes matters into her own hands… particularly as she has a keen suspicion about who is responsible for her daughters kidnapping.
For the first half of the novel, this somehow feels fast paced, even though it doesn’t actually go anywhere. There’s a lot of police interviews, a car chase and two parents wracking their brains for anything they can do to find their daughter. There were real issues with realism, but I could feel the anxiety and the suspense.. Then at around the half way point the perspective changes and it all fell apart. At least a quarter of the book is then from Lauren’s perspective and, honestly, it’s a pointless addition that adds nothing other than to the page count.
That alone would have been enough to drop this down to three stars. However, when combined with the very real issues with believability, my rating dropped further. It’s difficult to describe without spoilers, and I really hate spoilers. So, staying vague, I struggled with the timeline and whilst it ended up making sense, the ‘coincidental’ bit could have been cut and it would have made for a more streamlined and believable plot. The police investigation stretched credibility as I doubt an officer with a known prior bias against the family would be permitted to run the investigation and finally Isobel’s own investigation was at once both too long winded and too simple; things just seemed to fall into her lap and the way some of it does makes me question how the police didn’t have that relevant information in advance.
So, this was a quick and easy read that was fairly well written, but the sudden perspective shift and the serious glaring holes in believability let it down significantly which is a shame.
rabitoye's review
3.0
I started this one with high hopes but it just didn’t work out that way. I couldn’t get into it and it definitely is not one of those books you can read as a stand-alone. It is best to read this series in order.
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